















'^•^^ '';^«?^>': '^'^'^ '^W^^t "^-i 




















~ " .^^-v 































>0^ 




'bV 




v-c 






.^^"^ 








'bV 




v-o^ 








v^^ 



^^.>9^' 






0"' . 



o"^ c'JL'-/\ "' ^<i^'..-*' "'^• 



'. ^^^c<i ^'^^m^\ ^o^y ^^jm^^\ -^. 





^\ 



.^^' 



*.;o' y o ^.,,.' .0-' %. ^Tfl'^ c^ 




<^ 'o . . * .G^ \5^ ♦'T'. 









o 
^0. 



Second Suds Sayings 



A Collection of Stories, Sketches and 

Articles Regarding the Laundry 

by Well Known Writers 



Selected by 
CHARLES DOWST * 
For Forty Years Editor 
National Laundry Journal 



PUBLISHED BY 

NATIONAL, LAUNDRY JOURNAL 

DowsT Bros. Co.. Publishers 

CHICAGO 




r^^f 



Copyright, 1919 
BY DOWST BROS. COMPANY 



,S» 






'CI.A514922 



M/lR pq iqiq 



FOREWORD. 



As this work has been compiled from the files of the 
National Laundry Journal, some dating back to the 
early eighties, the title, ''Second Suds Sayings", sug- 
gested by a well known man of the laundry trade, 
seemed to me to be an especially apt one. 

Buried as they were, these interesting literary ef- 
forts seemed to be worthy of resurrection and preser- 
vation in book form, so that they might be once more 
perused by the "old timers," and also be read by the 
younger men of the industry. It also seemed to me 
that the articles should be put in book form for the 
benefit of the future laundry tradesmen, who surely 
will look back with great interest to the literature of 
their predecessors. 

Many of my good friends who enjoyed the earliest 
of these articles, as they appeared in the Journal, have 
gone to the Great Beyond, as has been recalled to my 
mind as I pored over the files of the paper. I am 
sure that all will agree with me that to these departed 



pioneers the trade owes a deep debt of gratitude, for 
they solved the first problems, which necessarily were 
the hardest. 

If this little book but amuse the reader in a few 
leisure hours, my object will have been accomplished. 
Surely, with its great variety of matter, from the pens 
of so large a number of contributors, it will at least 
furnish some pleasant diversion to all. 

CHARLES DOWST. 
Chicago, March, 1919. 



THE FOREMAN'S STORY. 



By Frank H. Spearman. 



It was after a meeting of the Laundry Club. The 
members around the table in the cafe were talking 
about a pioneer laundryowner that had recently died; 
the man that built the big laundry up from a wash- 
tub and a wringer to a plant that would not go 
through the Probate Court for less than fifty thous- 
and. Bob Simmons was in the group ; he's manager 
of that plant himself now — a four-thousand-dollar 
man — one of the kind they can't get along without. 

While each man without reserve expressed his 
opinion of the deceased laundryowner, Bob only list- 
ened quietly. When it came to Montie Brown he de- 
clared without hesitation that the old man, as far as he 
knew, was the meanest man that ever ran a laundry in 
Chicago. 

"Now, Bob," he appealed to Simmons, "isn't that 
about right? Honest injun, now? You worked for 
him years; you ought to know him." 

"Well, yes," answered Bob, kind of undecided 
like, "the old man was mean some ways, but the 
meanest thing he ever did isn't generally known to 
the trade. He didn't talk much; in fact, there's 
only two men who ever knew of this thing, and one 
of 'em's dead now. 



6 Second Suds Sayings 

"I was foreman then of the old plant." Bob spoke 
rather slow and looked straight into his glass as he 
flipped the ash of his cigar. "I did a little of every- 
thing those days. 

"One terribly cold Saturday evening I was alone 
in the office. It was snowing and blowing a gale off 
the lake. The front door opened and a country- 
looking boy walked in. He was a tall, lanky fellow, 
maybe sixteen, and looked for all the world as if 
he'd dropped out of a haymow and got caught in 
the snow coming from the barn. His coat sleeves 
were shy at the bottom by six inches, and he had on 
a fur cap that looked as if 'Dan' Boone had a mort- 
gage on it. Under his arm he carried a bundle 
about as big as a bologna sausage, and he passed it 
over the counter at me as if he was afraid I'd see 
what there was inside of it ; then he sneaked out 
quick while I was making out the list. 

"Well, I opened the bundle ; in it was a shirt, but 
I reckon there'r few shirts like that ever find their 
way into a steam washer. It was an old-fashioned, 
country, home-made shirt — the kind mother used to 
make, don't ye know; half bleached muslin, stout 
enough for a circus tent and tails built long enough 
to wind around his knees. It was made large, so if 
the boy should ever grow to be seven or eight feet 
tall the shirt would follow him. What puzzled me 
was to figure how the boy wrapped it up so small 
when he brought it in. Well, sir, something about 
that boy and his shirt interested me, and from that 
day on I watched the fellow. Whenever he brought 
in his bundle he would talk sometimes. Told me 



Second Suds Sayings 



where he was working, in one of the big down-town 
wholesale stores — five dollars a week. 

"But he was a worker, and every little while he 
climbed a step. I could keep track of his rise by- 
just glancing at his bundle once in a while. The 
old homestead shirts disappeared after a bit, and the 
home-knit woolen socks he began with went to the 
foreign missions. Ready made shirts began to ap- 
pear; cheap ones at first — fifty-centers, so thin you 
could sift kittens through them anywhere. Pretty 
soon he brought in the seventy-five-cent kind, cut 
with a little more of the milk of human kindness 
in the shirt, and from them he graduated to the six 
for five-dollar variety. The boy was wearing better 
clothes by that time, and his overcoats kept better 
company in the neck with his collars. He was jolly 
then and getting beyond back street boarding-hous- 
es and contract hash ; they were advancing him 
downtown right along. 

"Then all of a sudden things took a sharp up-turn. 
His bundles grew bigger right fast ; he quit bringing 
them down himself and ordered the wagon to call. 
Dollar-and-a-half shirt then and socks clocked in 
fancy colors. The boy was rising. He had a cash- 
ier's cage and was handling half the money of the 
big house. Still he'd come around and chat with 
the foreman, the same as usual ; wore the same sized 
collars and hats ; no swell head, just healthy and 
prosperous and beginning to see some life. One 
day I looked over his pieces as the girl was checking 
'em in and I noticed that 'Sam' Brown was making 
the boy's shirts — swell haberdasher, you know; 



8 Second Suds Sayings 

thirty-six dollars a dozen — and once in a while a pat- 
tern among them strong enough to crack a bosom 
ifoner, 

"Of course any laundry foreman has his teeth 
pretty well cut, so I said nothing, just kept quiet 
tab; but I began to think about country boys that 
come to big towns, get to making money — and going 
the pace. A year went by; the boy was down-town a 
good deal nights by that time, and doing the society 
act pretty hard, but sticking close to his work, mak- 
ing good stuff, and — well, living fairly high. 

"You remember the blizzard years ago, the time 
Roscoe Conkling went down in a drift in the upper 
part of New York City and never got up again ? It 
happened to be Saturday night, and the foreman was 
alone in the laundry to see things didn't freeze up 
on him. There wasn't, for a fact, another soul about 
the place. Out doors the snow was piling up to the 
second story. Street cars were tied up, hacks and 
cabs stalled, and nobody that could find a fire to tie 
up by was on the street. I was just poking up the 
old office stove when the front door opened and 
blew me half across the room. In walked the boy; 
a good bit taller, a good deal better dressed, and 
considerably more stylish, but the same boy of the 
home-made shirt and the gray yarn socks. He had 
a scared look, a hunted look, and it didn't take half 
an eye to see he had trouble on and a heap of it. 

"The first thing he said was : 'I've been trying 
for an hour to figure whether to drop a line to you to 
tell the old folks in Pike county, and then put a bul- 
let through my head, or to come and see you first.' 



Second Suds Sayings 9 

That's the way he began, and he looked it — des- 
perate as a hunted rat. I calmed the boy down the 
best I could; told him there must be something 
somewhere in the world for him that would beat a 
bullet. He burst into tears before I'd said a dozen 
words and after a while he told me his story, 

"It wasn't a new one to a laundry foreman that 
has to check up drivers, as you may guess. He had 
been put in the sales department; worked up a big 
city trade, and was doing all his own collecting; 
pockets full of money all the time. He'd got to 
playing cards; just a little, of course, and it hap- 
pened to be just a friendly little game of poker one 
night, with some acquaintances, when he had a 
pocket full of money. He got up from the table 
with his pockets empty; every dollar of his own 
gone and five hundred and fifty that belonged to 
the house. They were crowding him for a settle- 
ment; he was shy; it was either put up or go to the 
cage. 

"The boy and I sat there by the fire a good while, 
I asking questions and the boy sobbing. It wasn't 
a case for advice; not that kind of a case; the boy 
thought it was, but I knew better. I thought it 
all over good and hard and took plenty of time. I 
thought I knew the boy ; everything, of course, de- 
pended on that; thought I knew him a little better 
maybe, than the boy knew himself. Five hundred 
plunks was more than, anybody in the laundry busi- 
ness likes to throw at the birds ; but the boy quieted 
after a while and laid down in a temporary bunk in 
the ironing room; not to sleep, but to think. I sat 



10 Second Suds Sayings 

up most of the night poking the fire and trying to 
decide what to do and when I crawled in next to 
the young fellow I shoved a piece of paper into his 
hand ; it was a check for five hundred dollars. 

"Monday morning the boy waded down-town 
through the drifts before the cars got started, 
checked up his accounts and surprised his employers 
by resigning. He told them he was going into the 
laundry business — it was less exciting. That's about 
all. He's in it yet; works at the old laundry." 

"Look here, Bob," demanded Montie Brown, ex- 
citedly, "is that story true ?" 

"Every word, Montie." 

"Well, what's it got to do with your old dead 
boss?" 

"Nothing," said Bob, pausing, "except that I, my- 
self, was that country boy and that foreman was old 
Uncle Henry. I thought that when the boys who 
didn't know Uncle Henry quite so well as I did, got 
to calling him the meanest man in the laundry busi- 
ness, because he was careful where he planted his 
money, it was about time for me to tell 'The Fore- 
m.an's Story' — Hm !" 



OPIE READ'S DILEMMA. 



By Opie Read. 



The non-delivery of a package of a laundry at a 
specified time is most annoying to the average cus- 
tomer, but greatly more so to the transient patron 
who is to leave the city at a specified hour. Opie 
Read, the well known author, lecturer and entertain- 
er, wrote the editor of the Journal in regard to his 
experience, and told of his troubles that were over- 
come by his thoughtfulness, and the kindness of one 
of the Journal readers. It is a pleasure to repro- 
duce Mr. Read's letter, and we trust it will prove 
a warning to all, and that many, after reading it, 
will adopt the slogan, "On Time." 

Mr. Read wrote : 
"My Dear Dowst : 

"1 have had occasion on my last lecture tour to 
cuss one laundry and bless another, and as I used 
our friendship to gain my aim, I want to tell you of 
my trouble, and also to fulfill the promise I made 
to one of the Journal readers. 

"In a town where I had filled an engagement, 
I found, when ready to start for the depot, that the 
local laundry had not returned my package of linen, 
and could not before train time; but the owner 
promised to forward it by express on a later train, 



12 Second Suds Sayings 

so it would reach me on the following day at the 
place where I was to fill an engagement the next 
evening. Up to noon it had not arrived. I called 
at the express office, but no package. I had trav- 
eled quite a distance and my linen was badly soiled ; 
in fact, so much so that I would have been ashamed 
to appear before any audience. 

"I went to the leading store in town and appealed 
for help. There was considerable activity and desire 
on every hand to help me out, but desires do not 
furnish a man of my size with ready-made linen. 
There was nothing that was large enough, so I went 
to every other store in the town, but without any 
success. As you well know, I certainly wear nearly 
double the average man's size of shirt, and I have 
often wondered why the laundries do not charge me 
an increase in price for laundering them. 

"The time was drawing near. This lecture was 
to be before a very esthetic association, and I could 
only appear in immaculate linen. I went down to 
the railroad station to watch for the next express. I 
followed the wagon to the express office. Nothing 
for me ! 

"Then I reasoned if a tailor would rent you a 
dress suit for the evening, why will not a laundry fit 
you out with a clean shirt. So acting on this idea I 
called at the local laundry, introduced myself, told 
the proprietor of my dilemma. I noticed a copy of 
your paper on his desk, so I told him we were 
friends for years — brother members of the Press 
Club of Chicago — and on that account I inquired 
if he would help me out with the use of some other 
man's shirt for the evening. 



Second Suds Sayings 13 

" 'Friend Read,' he said, 'I will if I can, as I would 
like to oblige the editor of our trade paper as well 
as yourself.' He then called the clerk and inquired 
if Ed Brown's package had been delivered lor the 
week. 'If not, bring it in,' he said. 'Brown's size 
is about yours. In fact, he is the largest man in 
the town, and I will 'phone and get his permission 
to lend you one for the evening.' He measured me 
with a tape line, and then opened the package and 
measured Brown's shirt. Then he said, 'It will fit; 
take it along. I will call for it in the morning, and 
if you will send the bell-boy over with the one you 
have on, I will see that it is properly laundered, and 
returned to you when I send for Brown's.' 

"He refused any deposit as security for the 
linen, and in answer to my inquiries as to the 
charge for accommodating me he said : 'If you will 
promise to write Charley Dowst the story of how a 
local laundry saved the day for a lecturer, there will 
be no charge.' I thanked him again and again, and 
when I looked over the audience I was pleased to 
note that he was present, and his being there 
seemed to give me inspiration to do my best. 

"On this occasion — if I may speak modestly — I 
made something of a hit, and it was, I think, owing 
entirely to the encouragement I had received from 
this man who had furnished me with clean linen. 

"Friend Dowst, I often think of our friends in the 
old days of the early eighties, when you were trying 
to keep the Journal ofif the financial rocks, and when 
I had hard work in guiding 'The Arkansaw Trav- 
eler' safely into port. We were younger then." 



LAUGH IT OFF. 



By Wm. E. Fitch. 



When you feel like "Falling in", 

Laugh it off; 
When you're sorry you "Have been", 

Laugh it off; 
Feeling "Blue" don't help a bit, 
Better be "Glad of it", 

Laugh it off. 

Keep your "Sense of humor" bright. 

Laugh it off; 
Polish it with all your might, 

Laugh it off; 
Nothing matters over much, 
Tighten up your "Wisdom clutch". 

Laugh it off. 

I am writing this for YOU, 

Laugh it off; 
Like as not 'twill help me to 

Laugh it off; 
"Ravens perch above my door". 
But I whisper, "Nevermore" 

And — Laugh them off. 

We are all inclined to take ourselves, and others, 
too seriously. J^iter all, we are the architects and 
builders of our own lives, thoughts and feelings. Just 
because things seem to be going wrong end first is no 
reason why we should take on an expression like unto 



Second Suds Sayings 15 

that of a "dying calf." There is a point of humor in 
the most trying situation, and it can be found if we 
will only "laugh it off." Try to see the funny side of 
things. It is there, just as the sun is always concealed 
behind the darkest cloud. And we all know how much 
brighter the sun shines when it has "pushed the clouds 
away." 

It does a heap of good to poke fun at one's self. 
Just try it the next time old Father Gloom comes 
along and settles the black mantle of his presence over 
you. Tell yourself a funny story. Go to the glass 
and make faces at yourself — anything — just to sliow 
how ridiculous it is for you to give way to a fit of 
the "blues." I never could quite make out why that 
word was not "blacks," instead of "blues." 

Just as sunshine becomes monotonous and the show- 
er of rain is welcome, so we must expect in life and 
business to have our little "showers." They, like the 
rain, have a tendency to settle the "dust" and chase 
away the cobwebs. It is only when the showers turn 
into cloudbursts that the damage is done, in either case. 

I am not going to try to tell you that there is noth- 
ing serious in life. That would not be true. Serious, 
sober thought, and worry, are two separate and dis- 
tinct things. There is much need of sober thought in 
this life. Does not the "Fra" tell us that "Life is a 
serious proposition — few of us get out of it alive." 
The "Fra" says a great number of very wise things, 
and the above is one of them, for it ends with a bit 
of humor. 

In this day of frenzied business methods, frenzied 
society and frenzied finance, the man who by his pres- 



16 Second Suds Sayings 

ence or his written word can lift us for the time be- 
ing out of the boiling, seething cauldron of brain- 
racking, nerve-destroying present-day business life is 
doing much to preserve our brain equilibrium. We 
talk shop, think shop, eat shop, until it seems that 
there is no place of rest for us. And when we are 
about ready to give up the ghost and surrender to the 
will of the mob, along comes one of God's appointed 
who tells us a funny story, makes a joke out of the 
whole thing, and shows us that, after all, things are 
not so hopeless as they seem to be; that there is a 
heap of fun to be had even in one's business if he will 
only look for it; that the opposite of darkness is 
"light," and that as soon as you "bring in the light," 
the darkness packs up and gets out. 

Getting right down to every-day occurrences — why 
this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth be- 
cause some competitor has taken away a piece of busi- 
ness ? Far be it from any thought of mine even to sug- 
gest that losing business has ever been recommended 
as a promoter of mental exhilaration ; but then, we all 
have to lose it. After we have lost an account, we 
must look at it in the light that even though this ac- 
count is gone — temporarily — there is still just as much 
business in the world as there was before, and it is up 
to us to get out and get our share of it. And say, 
Harold, believe me when I say, "You can't catch busi- 
ness by baiting your hook with a grouch." Therefore, 
if you feel that you have a "grouch on," laugh it off, 
and when you have replaced the frowns with smiles, 
then and not till then do you go out and gather in two 
accounts where only one was before. 

Perhaps it isn't business that brings on the look of 



Second Suds Sayings 17 

dark, deep, dank despair. Mayhap some much loved 
lady has transferred her affection to some "hand- 
somer" man. What of it? No one has a corner on 
the ladies.. They are everywhere — large ladies, small 
ladies, pretty ladies, and — no, I won't say it. But, 
anyway, "there are just as good fish in the sea as have 
ever been caught." At least, so I am informed by an 
"oldtimer" who seemed to know. 

Perhaps "She" is not the cause. Like as not health 
has gone back on you. If that be the case, get out in 
the woods, breathe, exercise, hunt, fish, swim, row, 
play golf, tennis or anything that will help you to 
"laugh it off." Germs love to lurk in dark places. 
Turn on the light, hold fast to your good nature. 
Keep your spirits up, don't put other spirits down. 
Do these things, and if you cannot scare away what- 
ever ails you, you will have a heap of fun "a-tryin'." 

There are a lot of men in the world who are as 
good as a tonic for me. They have the^aculty of help- 
ing me to "forget it." I like to be in their society; 
they encourage me to do and to become. These men 
are richly endowed, for when God gives a man a 
cheerful, hopeful and helpful disposition, he gives him 
his richest blessing. No one loves the grouch, but 
there is a place at every fireside for the man who can 
point out the bright spots and chase dull care away. 

So, then, if we must "fear the worst," let us hope 
for the best. Let us realize that worry, or a case of 
the "blues," never made a man prosperous, pious or 
popular ; that long faces are decidedly passe and should 
be laid away on the shelf with other outgrown and 
useless appendages. And, just as a paHi^jgshot, if 
you can't get rid of it any other way, laugh it cJft-....,,.^^ 



MEMORIES OF LONG AGO. 



By Charles Dowst. 



I think it was in 1879 that I made the acquaintance 
of three men, who owned the leading laundry in their 
city, but have since passed to the Great Beyond. I 
refer to Ira Godfrey, of the Swiss Steam Laundry, 
of Washington ; Frank Shute, proprietor of the Quak- 
er City Laundry in Philadelphia; Joseph Mabbett, 
owner of the Empire Laundry, in Baltimore. The 
three were great friends and often made up a party 
to visit New York. Godfrey was one of those wiry 
little men, impulsive, a good story teller, generous to 
a fault, and liked nothing better than a day or two off 
to visit Coney Island, with tv/o or three genial com- 
panions. 

Godfrey was proprietor of the Swiss Laundry, at 
that time the leading establishment in the Capital, had 
a fine trade, obtained the highest prices, turned out 
most excellent work, and, I believe, was the first laun- 
dryowner in the country to use newspapers for ad- 
vertising his establishment. He was a generous buyer 
of space, using on special occasions as much as a whole 
page in the daily papers of the Capital. He was of 
slight build, quick in his movements, of a nervous dis- 
position — a worker, progressive in adopting any new 
machine that would improve the quality of work or in- 
crease the output. 



Second Suds Sayings 19 

He was a most companionable man and his remarks 
on all occasions were amusing. He would order the 
waiter in the hotel to bring him some fried asbestos. 
The waiter, of course, would stare and ask him to re- 
peat the order, which Godfrey would. Then the head 
waiter would be called and Godfrey would say : "What 
is all this row about when I simply asked for fried 
eggs." He had a fine sense of humor and when a joke 
was on him he seemed more than pleased. 

One morning when we were at the Grand Hotel in 
Saratoga, we needed a shoe polish, and Godfrey said 
to the little old Irishman who presided at the stand: 
"Give me a left-hand shine." "Sure," said the son of 
Erin, "but it will cost you a quarter extra," and he 
proceeded to finish his work, using only the left hand. 
When the job was completed, he stepped aside, smiled 
and held out his hand. Godfrey dropped a half-dollar 
in it and laughed heartily. All the forenoon he would 
chuckle to himself over the Irishman's wit, and I hon- 
estly believe that he got more enjoyment out of that 
fifty cents than any money he ever spent. 

On Godfrey's return from Europe, where he had 
spent a month with his wife and boy, who were spend- 
ing the summer on the continent, he v/ired me on his 
arrival at New York to come on to the Capitol and 
pay him a visit. I arrived in Washington early in the 
morning, and after breakfast strolled over to his plant 
on "F" street and found him out in the laundry in a 
peck of trouble. Things had not gone to his satisfac- 
tion during his absence, and that morning he had a 
break down in the power department. "Dowst, I am 
glad to see you," was his greeting, "but you will have 



20 Second Suds Sayings 

to excuse me today. I am going to turn you over to 
the Major, whom you have met before, and he will 
entertain you for the day by taking you to the Capitol 
and you will hear my friend, the Senator, make his 
great speech on the tariff question, and this evening 
meet him personally, as I am giving a little stag din- 
ner in your honor at my home. He will be one of 
the guests, along with an Iowa Congressman, and of 
course our friend the Major." 

We went over to the Ebbett House, found the Ma- 
jor, and Godfrey left us to make it unpleasant for 
everyone connected with the Swiss Laundry, which he 
could do when things happened to go wrong. 

The Capitol is an interesting place to anyone and 
with such a guide and companion as the Major, I 
thoroughly enjoyed each minute. On entering the sen- 
ate gallery, we found Godfrey's friend, the Senator, 
had just started to make his speech, and as it was 
known in advance he was to speak on the tariff, the 
gallery was crowded and nearly every senator was in 
his seat paying the most careful attention to the re- 
marks of the Senator, who had the floor. For the 
first time in my life I understood the meaning of the 
words "senatorial dignity." To me it seemed wonder- 
ful that one man could hold, by his eloquence, the at- 
tention of an assemblage of the greatest men in the 
country, and I was a little timid in. regard to meeting 
him later at Godfrey's dinner. 

The sun was setting when we reached Godfrey's 
home, and on the piazza was the Senator, the Con- 
gressman and Ira. 

To describe that dinner thirty or more years after- 
wards -seems impossible, but I distinctly remember 



Second Suds Sayings 21 

that the table was loaded down with the choicest of 
flowers from the National Botanical Gardens, a gift 
from the Congressman, and it was a banquet even Lu- 
cilius would envy. The Senator was the life of the 
party and his wit and stories made the meal doubly 
enjoyable. After coffee, and cigars were lit, we ad- 
journed to the parlor, and the Major, who could "make 
a piano talk," favored us with several selections. 

Godfrey left us for a moment, and returned with 
two mechanical toys he had purchased in Paris. One 
was a walking bear, the other a leaping frog, and so 
constructed that they would walk or leap a short dis- 
tance and then stop for an indefinite time before start- 
ing again. He started the pair across the parlor floor, 
remarking: "A dollar the frog wins." 

"I take the bet," the Senator replied, and we all 
instantly became interested. That started the fun and 
the Congressman took the frog to compete with the 
senatorial bear. It was a continuous Derby with those 
two great men, sitting there on the parlor floor, wind- 
ing up those mechanical toys, starting them off at the 
drop of a handkerchief, and shouting, like regular 
race touts: "Go it. Frog!" "Come on, you Bear!" 
I was as much interested in the races as either the 
Senator or the Congressman, but I could not conceive 
that the man on his hands and knees on that parlor 
floor was the one who in the Senate of the United 
States that afternoon was holding the attention of that 
vast assembly. It gave me an insight as to human na- 
ture I never had before. 

One of the toys gave out after a few races, but 
I think the Congressman had several senatorial dollars. 



22 Second Suds Sayings 

Frank A. Shute, Proprietor of the Quaker City 
Laundry, of Philadelphia, another of the trio, was a 
man of rather small stature, about five feet six in 
height, wore a full beard, and his eyes twinkled with 
merriment. 

With his friends he was the soul of hospitality, 
and if you called at his laundry he would, with pleas- 
ure, show you over the plant and then order a carriage, 
tell his brother Ike he was going. Ho ! it was then, for 
a drive through beautiful Fairmont Park, up along the 
Wissihicon River, to his favorite road house, for a 
light lunch, a little liquid refreshment, a smoke, and 
interesting reminiscence of bygone days, until time 
for the return drive to the city, so as to be able to 
catch the ferry for Gloucester, N. J. Here he would 
entertain you with a shad dinner that had a national 
reputation. He dearly loved to entertain his chosen 
friends, and one felt that his hospitality came from 
the heart. Mr. Shute was elected President of the 
National Association at its first meeting in Philadel- 
phia, and during his life he took an active interest in 
its welfare. 



Joseph Mabbett, Proprietor of the Empire Laun- 
dry, of Baltimore, completed the trio above mentioned, 
and was, I think, the veteran laundry tradesman of 
the party. 

He was a man of commanding presence, fully six 
feet tall, wore a full beard and weighed nearly two 
hundred pounds. He was the perfect counterpart of 



Second Suds Sayings 23 

the late lamented President Garfield, and so close was 
the resemblance that on many occasions he was given 
a rousing reception intended for the President. 

Mr. Mabbett was of Quaker origin and in his home 
life it was "thee" and "thou," but he enjoyed the 
company of Godfrey and Shute, who were far from 
the Quaker idea of what deportment a man should as- 
sume when over forty years of age, and he acted as 
sort of a balance wheel for the other two. 

I do not recollect when Mabbett first started in 
the laundry business, but it must have been in a small 
way, as he kept over the door of his establishment, 
even when he had a large plant, a big gilt sign that 
said, "Empire Laundry," the original sign he started 
with, reading "Washing and Ironing Done Here." All 
three of my old friends have passed to the Great Un- 
known, and when I recollect early days, I feel I would 
be willing to give some years of my life to greet them 
once more as of yore, lay care aside and enjoy their 
company as in days gone by. 

* * * 

I had just got comfortably seated in one of the big 
leather-covered, "sleepy-hollow" chairs in the lounging 
room at the Press Club and was enjoying an after- 
dinner cigar, when I was joined by one of the oldest 
members of the Club, who was formerly a writer of 
leading editorials on one of the dailies. Years ago he 
"held down a pair of cases" in the composing room of 
the same paper; but now he is taking life easy and 
only doing special work. 

"Charley," he said, "I read your last article entitled 
'Memories of Long Ago' and it brought to mind the 



24 Second Suds Sayings 

fact that I also have some memories regarding the 
laundry business, and also that I am about the oldest 
constant patron of any one laundry in this city. 
Whenever I enter the Club, these recollections are 
brought to mind, as the store floor of the Club build- 
ing on the north side of the entrance is occupied by 
Munger's Laundry as an office. 

"Back in the early eighties, when I was a^ompositor 
on one of the daily papers, I used to leave my bundle 
On Monday at Munger's down-town office, on the 
west side of Dearborn street, just north of Madison, 
and I believe the building now owned by the Press 
Club is on the same spot. George Sinsabaugh had 
charge of the laundry office in those days, and I made 
his acquaintance. He was a jovial fellow, made lots 
of friends and had a faculty of remembering names 
and faces that was of great help to him in business. 
I used to stay and chat with him almost every week, 
when I brought in my bundle. In those days, nearly 
everyone carried his bundle to the laundry and called 
for it; in fact, I don't think that the number of pack- 
ages that were called for and delivered by wagon was 
fifty per cent of what it is today. 

"During our conversation, Sinsabaugh told me that 
Munger's Laundry was located in the rear of the old 
Crosby Opera House on Washington street before the 
fire of '71, and that after the fire the main office was in 
a one-story cottage on State street, near Fourteenth; 
but as soon as the burned district was built up, Munger 
opened an office on Dearborn street, just north of 
Madison, and has retained one there ever since. 

"In the early eighties the laundry business was at 



Second Suds Sayings 25 

its best, Sinsabaugh told me, and I guess he was right, 
as I well remember that often he used to hang a sign on 
the front door on Wednesday, reading, 'No more laun- 
dry promised this week,' just the same as a theatre 
sign, 'Standing room only'. George Sinsabaugh was 
there for years, but moved away from the city and I 
missed our usual chat each week but continued a Hun- 
ger patron up to the present time, but gave up carry- 
ing my bundle to the office years and years ago and 
today like others expect them to call for and deliver 
my package if I have only two collars to be done up,'-' 

We sat there for some time enjoying our cigars and 

the good cheer the steward had placed on the little 

round table in front of us, and I was wishing that 

my friend would tell me more of his memories of the 

laundry business of by-gone days, when collars were 

three cents and drop trade run as high as fifty per 

cent, or even more. 

* * * 

The Press Club man was right in regard to the 
amount of drop trade there was some thirty years ago 
and also about the sign in Hunger's Laundry office at 
noon on Wednesdays, as I have seen the same myself 
in the old days. 

To illustrate further the extent of the drop trade in 
1881 or 1882, and also how the capacities of the laun- 
dries were taxed, I will state that at the office of the 
Eureka Laundry, at 157 West Madison street, Mn 
Ellis, the President of the Company, often had to se- 
cure the services of a city policeman to keep in line 
customers who were calling for bundles, on Satur- 
day evenings, from 5 to 8 p. m. This congestion oc- 



26 Second Suds Sayings 

curred frequently, notwithstanding the fact that the 
office occupied the entire store floor, with counters and 
shelves on both sides, and plenty of clerks to wait on 
the customers. 

This rush trade of course was unusual, but it existed 
for several weeks during the summer months. Fa- 
cilities for turning out work at that period were not 
the best. Laundry machinery was just coming into 
use, which would in a measure, account for that state 
of affairs. 

* * * 

The kindly feeling that laundryowners have towards 
fellow tradesmen today was something unknown when 
I first began publishing the Journal in 1878, at which 
time few laundryowners were even on speaking terms 
with their fellow tradesmen. If they saw one coming 
down the street, it was ten-to-one that they would 
rather cross to the other side than meet him. There 
were isolated cases where they were good friends, 
but such instances were rare. 

Some laundryowners at that date would allow no 
one except an employee to enter their establishment 
and would as willingly have thought of taking a snake 
to their bosom as they would have allowed a fellow 
tradesman to go through their plants. I recall the fact 
that in a large city in the State of New York, the pro- 
prietors of the leading laundry would not even allow 
their brothers from other cities to enter their plant, 
to say nothing of allowing others to become conver- 
sant with what they supposed to be very superior 
methods of doing work. But cutting prices, stealing 
deliverymen, securing other's agents, labor strikes and 



Second Suds Sayings 27 

other evils that existed finally brought about local 
associations. Then the laundryowners finally stood 
shoulder-to-shoulder, each leaning on the other for 
support. 

I am pleased to say that now the old hatred of a 
fellow tradesman is rare indeed, if it does exist at 
all, and in its place is a feeling that I rejoice in. This 
is shown in times of trouble, such as fires, accidents to 
the power plants, etc. I have known hundreds of in- 
stances where laundryowners have immediately tele- 
phoned their brothers in distress they would help 
them out, even to running their plant all night, if 
necessary. This is directly the opposite of the feeling 
that existed thirty-five years ago, and I hope that the 
old prejudice towards a fellow tradesman never will 
return, as it was unnatural and grew from false 

principles. 

* * * 

At the banquet tendered to J. A. Barkey by the 
members of the Chicago Laundry Club when he re- 
tired after serving a year as President of the National 
Association. I was called on for a few remarks by the 
toastmaster, and the man who sat at my right whis- 
pered "Give us some tales of long ago." 

At another table, facing me, sat a sandy complex- 
ioned pioneer laundryowner, whose smile, when I arose 
to speak, brought back recollections of a laundry ex- 
perience that I had some years prior to my starting 
the Journal. 

In 1875, I was representing one of the Chicago 
daiHes at Waukesha, Wisconsin, sending in summer 



28 Second Suds Sayings 

resort gossips for the Sunday issue. Waukesha at 
that time was in its glory. Matthew Laflin, a Chicago 
millionaire, had built the Fountain Spring Hotel with 
three or four hundred rooms. The mineral springs 
in the city had a national reputation and the resort 
was filled with visitors, mostly southerners. 

One morning I received instructions from the daily 
paper that I was representing to report a grand ball, 
to be held by the Southern Society at the Fountain 
Spring Hotel that evening. I discovered that I needed 
a clean shirt sadly, so I started for the local laundry, 
located just beyond the bridge, and told the woman 
who came forward to wait on me that I wanted to get 
the shirt by six o'clock that evening. "Next week," 
was her reply, and no end of talk could change it. 
I asked for the proprietor and she said that he was 
outside on a platform, that was over the river, fixing 
a pump. I immediately sought him and said I needed 
the shirt that evening. 

"Why don't you buy one?" he asked. 

Buy one! A cub reporter is lucky to have two 
shirts, I thought. Pay day was several days ofif, so I 
explained to him my predicament and a smile lit up 
his face, and I guess mine followed suit, when he said, 
"You shall have the shirt by six this evening if I have 
to iron it myself." 

That laundryowner was my old friend, Peter A. 
Schriver, President of the Schriver Laundry Com- 
pany, of Chicago, and partner of the guest of honor, 
J. A. Barkey. Mr. Schriver sold the laundry in Wau- 
kesha the next year and moved to Chicago. When I 
started the Journal and renewed my acquaintance 



Second Suds Sayings 29- 

with him, I referred to the incident at Waukesha and 
we had a good laugh over the affair. He has been 
taking life easy for several years, has his winter home 
on the Gulf Coast of Florida and a summer cottage 
at Power's Lake, Wisconsin, and his partner, Mr. 
Barkey, attends to keeping the laundry in the front 
rank. But I shall never forget how he saved me from 
attending a grand ball in soiled linen. 
* * * 

If some of the old timers who have passed away 
could come back to life and see the improvements the 
trade has made in the last thirty or forty years, they 
would think that in their day they knew nothing in 
regard to conducting a laundry. I recall my first visit 
to the "Quaker City," in the early eighties, when the 
proprietor of the leading laundry took great pride in 
showing me through his establishment, dilating on the 
quality of work that he turned out. It was excellent 
and he was justified in feeling proud of it, especially 
the collar and cuff work; but if he could see a late 
model starching machine and one of the modern dry 
rooms today, he would think that he was in fairyland. 

He was at that time starching his collars and cuffs 
by hand, hanging them on small racks that were about 
three feet long by two feet high. When filled, each 
rack was carried the length of the building, some 
sixty feet, and placed in a dryroom that was heated by 
a large stove, which also heated the irons for the shirt 
ironers on the same floor. Collar and cuff machines 
were few and far between. Shirt ironing was mostly 
done by hand. Only a few establishments had given 
shirt ironing machines a trial, and body ironers were 



30 Second Suds Sayings 

entirely unknown; nevertheless, the above-mentioned 
laundry was turning out a large amount of new and 
old work, making good money, and its proprietor, in a 
year or so, put in a full line of machinery. He al- 
ways was one of the first to give a new idea a fair trial, 
and when I visited his establishment a few years later, 
I found it up-to-date in every respect. The reverse 
motion cylinder washer had come into tolerably gen- 
eral use at that time, but in many eastern establish- 
ments the old style dash wheel and fulling machine 
pattern still could be found in use. 



LAUNDERING IN ASIA. 



By Frank G. Carpenter. 



Take a trip with me among the laundrymen of Asia. 
I might rather say among the laundrywomen ; it is only 
the American who has as yet harnessed the mighty 
horses of steel and steam to save the backs and arms 
of his womankind. 

You remember the magic carpets of fairyland which 
by a wish transported the traveler across sea and land 
in the twinkling of an eye. Our magic carpet shall be 
a well-ironed sheet, and we shall sail upon it over the 
world, regardless of time and space. Our first visit 
shall be to Batavia, the capital of Java. We are seated 
on the banks of the canal which runs through the 
city. Great trees with banyan-like roots hang over us, 
shading us from the tropical sun and the fresh, soft 
air of the equatorial sea fans our cheeks as we look. 
In the garden over there are yellow oranges looking 
out of the green, and a banana plant grows under the 
palms a little further on. 

On each side the canal are well-paved walks and 
drives and upon them, moving to and fro, are the many 
queer human characters which make up the population 
of the capital of Asiatic Holland. There are Dutch of- 
ficials dressed in suits of the whitest duck linen, rich 
Chinese merchants who have come here to trade, im- 



32 Second Suds Sayings 

maculate in well-ironed pongee silks and the little 
brown natives dressed in clean cottons of many colors 
and patterns. The Dutch are noted the world over for 
their cleanliness, and their Javanese subjects have as 
well laundered clothes as any nation of the Far East. 

Turn your eyes now to the canal and you may see 
how the washing is done. It is without tub or wash- 
board in the water of that half muddy stream. The 
canal is walled with bricks, and at every few yards 
there are steps leading from the street down into it. 
Each pair of steps is filled with bare-shouldered, 
brown-skinned maidens, who stand up to their waists 
in the water pounding the wet clothes on the stones, 
rubbing them with their hands and wringing them be- 
fore they lay them out on the grass to dry. 

The women wear but one garment, the sarong, a 
bag-like skirt as wide at the top as at the bottom, 
fastened over the breasts by a tight twist and a knot. 
Their arms and shoulders are bare, and the sarong, 
soaked as it is, clings to them, outlining their plump, 
round forms as distinctly as though they were clad in 
the costume of Eve before the days of the fig leaf. 
The sun turns their shoulders to mahogany as they 
rub the clothes to' and fro on the stones, and the 
drops sparkle like diamonds as they throw them up 
into the air and bring them down with a slap on the 
steps. They keep at their work until the clothes are 
perfectly clean and bring them well ironed to their 
customers. 

In the Philippines. 

Washing in the Philippines is done in much the same 
way. At every stream in and about Manila you may 



Second Suds Sayings 33 

see such women at work. The washing is all done in 
cold water, for the people have no means of boiling or 
steaming. In some of the houses you may find tubs, 
but they are of about half the diameter of our ordinary 
wash tub and not over eight inches in depth. The 
woman kneels upon the ground as she washes and the 
dirt is taken out by rubbing the garments against the 
sides of the tub, or upon a stone. Sometimes the 
clothes are laid on the stones and pounded with a 
paddle. The most common way of ironing is with an 
iron box which has hot coals inside it. The box is 
rubbed to and fro over the clothes, and a very fair 
gloss thus obtained. I saw such irons in use among 
the Mahommedan Moros in the island of Mindanao. 

Steam laundries are much needed by the American 
population of the Philippines, and they would be well 
patronized by the better class natives. One of the 
great dangers of the present method of washing is the 
communication of disase and especially the adobe itch. 
This plague has attacked nearly every American wom- 
an, and man, soldier and civilian, who has visited the 
Philippines. It is supposed to be caused by microbes 
which infest the waters of the streams and attach 
themselves to the garments when washed and from 
them go to the bodies of the wearers. Once caughtj 
the disease spreads itself rapidly over the body, doing 
the greatest damage between the toes, at the arm pits 
and wherever perspiration is greatest. It is a sort of 
itch which can be easily cured by washing the body 
with listerine, but it is disagreeable, and painful, and if 
not soon attenfled to will land one in the hospital. I 
escaped it during my stay in the Philippines, although 



34 Second Suds Sayings 

I was in terror for some time after every change of 
my linens. 

In Picturesque Japan. 

A short ride on our magic sheet brings us northward 
to the land of Japan. The people here are cleaner 
even than those of Java. They take a red hot bath 
every day, and their bodies have less dirt upon them 
than those of any other people. They are scrupu- 
lously clean as to their clothes, and we see washing 
going on everywhere. There are low tubs like those 
we saw in the Philippines, out on the sidewalks and 
roadways, near the wells and by the streams with 
little women on their knees scrubbing away. They 
have neither washboards nor patent wringers, and all 
the work is done with the hands. 

Notice the garments. They are all in pieces. The 
Japanese rip their clothes apart before washing. The 
kimonos and other articles are sewn with long stitches 
and so simply made that a woman can easily put them 
together. There is little difference between the clothes 
of the women and men. Those of the common people 
are of cotton, dyed blue or black, with the bright dec- 
orations which you see everywhere in Japan. The 
best clothes are reserved for special occasions and the 
wonderful silks and satins are never washed. 

No Japanese lady thinks of wearing her fine clothes 
on the streets, however wealthy she may be, although 
very many of the better classes have as costly gowns 
as their American sisters. 

The ironing of Japan is even more strange than the 
washing. The sun does the work without fire or 
clothes line. Each woman has a number of very light 



Second Suds Sayings 85 

and very smooth ironing boards. These are about 
five feet long and about eighteen inches wide. As 
soon as a strip is washed it is spread smoothly out 
upon one of these boards and the board is then placed 
on end with the cloth facing the sun. It dries thus 
without a wrinkle and comes off as smooth and as 
stiff as though it were starched. Such ironing boards 
are in common use all over Japan. 

Rat, Tat, Tat, of Korea. 

The strangest ironing, however, we shall find in our 
tour is that of Korea. We hear the sound of it coming 
from almost every thatched house as we walk through 
the great city of Seoul. Rat, tat, tat, tat ! Rat, tat, tat, 
tat ! Rat, tat, tat, tat ! And a rat, tat, tat ! 

It sounds as though the people within were playing 
some kind of a game and we cannot imagine what it 
is until we meet friends who take us inside. Then we 
see two Korean maidens seated on the floor, each with 
a club in her hand, pounding upon a block about which 
some dry but newly washed clothes are stretched. The 
women keep perfect time, and they pound on and on 
until every fiber of the cloth has been smoothed out, so 
that when it is removed from the block it has all the 
polish of a first-class laundry. 

This ironing takes up a large part of the time of 
the women of Korea. There is no country where the 
men dress more gorgeously, and where machine laun- 
dry work is more needed. The ordinary costume for 
even the common men is white and the richer wear 
cottons of the most delicate pinks and sky blues. A 
suit consists of a pair of white, baggy trousers, so full 
that they could be tied about the neck instead of the 



36 Second Suds Sayings 

waist. Above these are white shirts and over all a long 
white, blue, or pink coat, with very full sleeves. The 
clothes of the better class men are immaculate and 
out of the meanest huts we see men strutting who 
look as though they had come from bandboxes. The 
women dress much more simply than the men, and 
it takes the greater part of the poor woman's time 
to keep her husband's clothes in good condition. 

The most of the Korean washing is done in the 
streams. There is one creek just outside Seoul which 
has so much of this work always going on upon its 
banks that it is said to run through the "Valley of 
Clothes." The dirt is taken out by pounding and 
beating the garments upon stones rather than by rub- 
bing them. The clothes are often ripped as in Japan 
and sewn together again after each laundering. The 
women are not expected to be seen on the streets and 
those of the better classes seldom go out except in 
closed chairs. No woman should ever allow herself 
to be seen by any man but her husband, and there- 
fore the Koreans think the average woman needs but 
few clothes. 

It is a strange thing that it is so difficult to get 
good washing in China. The average Celestial knows 
nothing about washing until he gets outside his own 
country. He can get the dirt out of your clothes, 
but cannot starch or iron them properly. As a 
class the Chinese are dirty, and it is said the ordinary 
native has but two baths during his lifetime, one 
when he is born and the other when he dies. 

Among the Siamese. 
But let us leave this part of the world and make 



Second Suds Sayings 37 

our way southward. We utter the word Bangkok, 
close our eyes, and wake up on the banks of the 
Menam River in the capital of Siam. We are in a 
city where more than one hundred thousand people 
live and die upon the water. They are in houses 
which float on the river, and which, anchored not far 
from the shore, rise and fall with the tide. Each 
floating house has a porch a little above the level 
of the water, with steps leading down into it, and 
upon these steps men and women are standing and 
sitting, washing their clothes. 

The women and men wear practically the same 
costume. It consists of a waist cloth of cotton calico, 
which falls to below the knees and is pulled through 
the legs and tucked in at the back. Some of the 
people have jackets, but many have only a Turkish 
towel about the shoulders. The waist cloths are cheap 
and the ordinary man or woman has several. Each 
brings an extra one with him when he comes out to 
take his morning bath and washes it well with his 
hands as he stands on the steps of his house, waist 
deep in the water. When he comes out he wraps the 
clean, dry cloth about him and hangs the washed one 
up to dry. Such washing may be seen at any hour 
of the day in the river at Bangkok. 

We are now in the heart of the tropics. The people 
need little clothing for warmth and the children in 
most cases are as naked as when they were born. 
Some have a coat of yellow powder to keep off the 
mosquitoes, and the little boys and girls have strings 
of charms around their naked waists to ward away 
the evil spirits. Many men and women wear noth- 



38 Second Suds Sayings 

ing above the waist, standing half nude in their boats 
as they scull themselves rapidly along from one place 
to another. 

The laundry work of Singapore is done largely by 
the Kling tribe of East Indians, the men doing the 
washing. I have seen them standing in the streams 
pounding the white garments upon the stones. They 
wear nothing but a loincloth, and their lean, muscular 
frames, as black as oiled ebony, shine out under the 
hot tropical sun. They lift the garments high into 
the air and bring them down with a slap on the rocks, 
breaking the buttons and often tearing the clothes. 
Much of their washing consists of the white duck suits 
of English residents, which on this account are made 
with buttons that can be taken off before washing. 

Along the Ganges. 

The laundry work of India is largely done by the 
men, the washerman being one of the chief characters 
of every city. The washing is done in cold water and 
usually near the wells or at the ponds and the streams. 
Along the Ganges much of the native washing is ac- 
companied with praying. I sailed one cold winter 
morning down that sacred stream past the most sacred 
city of Benares. The river was filled with native 
men, women and children who had come out to wash 
off their sins and their clothes at the same time. The 
most of them wore white cotton garments, and in the 
majority of cases the only garments consisted of 
sheets wrapped about their black forms. 

As we sailed by we saw a funeral procession bring- 
ing down the body of a man to be cremated on the 
banks of the river in the belief that as his ashes floated 



Second Suds Sayings 89 

away upon the sacred waters his soul would fly up to 
Heaven. As the funeral pyre was reached the widow 
of the deceased was shoved into the water, and she 
stood there during the burning of her husband's body. 
"After this," said my guide, "she will be led home in 
her wet garments ; she will have to sleep on the floor 
and for the rest of her life will be looked upon as an 
outcast, the theory being that the more miserable she 
is the happier will her husband be in Heaven." 

Washing in all parts of the Orient is much the same 
as that I have described. Labor is exceedingly cheap 
and clothes are washed almost everywhere for a few 
cents a garment. I have had my washing done for as 
little as two cents a piece and this notwithstanding 
many of the pieces were linen coats and trousers. It 
is about the same in Persia, Palestine and Turkey, 
most of the work being done at the streams. 



THE TALE OF HIS SHIRTS. 



By George Fitch. 



[The following letter was written to W. E. Fitch by 
his cousin, George Fitch, the well known humorist and 
poet] 

I should have answered your letter before, I know, 
but it has been the same old story. I have been spend- 
ing my time each day in trying to figure out how to 
make five columns of bright, lively, readable news out 
of two church socials and a funeral, or some such ar- 
ray of sensations as that. They are very peaceable 
here in Keokuk. Everyone says that the town is dead 
and everyone is standing around in a hushed and awed 
sort of manner, waiting for the funeral. The river is 
the only lively institution in the town. Every day I go 
down to the levee to see if the old Mississippi is still 
running and if it is I issue an extra to announce the 
fact. Then the town heaves a grateful sigh and knows 
that the world still moves. 

I notice by the circulars which you enclose me 
that you are secretary of the Illinois Laundry owners' 
Association, and that the association is going to hold 
its annual convention at Peoria next month. I should 
dearly love to steal into the convention hall while 
you are in session and gaze upon a body of men who 
have never had to wait for their laundry at a critical 
time; who can walk into the establishment and clean 



Second Suds Sayings 41 

it out from cellar to garret if they please whenever 
their best shirt comes back in three pieces; and who 
have never known the agony of trying to melt the 
heart of an adamant route man and get a laundry 
bundle without paying for it. I envy the laundry- 
owners. Their brows should be as smooth and un- 
wrinkled as their freshly laundered cuffs; their smile 
as bright and broad as the shining expanses of their 
white shirt fronts ; their tempers as unruffled as their 
immaculate four-ply collars. 

By the way, Will, I wish you would bring a little 
matter before the convention for me, seeing that you 
are its secretary. I have talked it over with a good 
many Illinois laundryowners — that is, I have men- 
tioned it in a pale blue and sulphurous sort of man- 
ner — but it has never seemed to do much good at the 
time. Maybe the association, however, will be able 
to take it up and discuss it, or run it through the 
ironing machine or do something with it. I want the 
association, if it will, to trace up and locate a box of 
shirts whose loss I have been mourning for the past 
year. I don't expect them to return the shirts to me 
whole. They weren't whole the last time I saw them ; 
that is, not wholly whole — I mean they were holy but 
not whole. At any rate, they have gone into the great 
beyond and I am inconsolable. 

I loved those shirts as one would love a brother. 
They clung to my somewhat eccentric form as close- 
ly as a brother would have done — or somebody else's 
sister for that matter. They were shirts of no ordi- 
nary breeding, but garments of high degree, which I 
have bought in a moment of reckless extravagance. 



42 Second Suds Sayings 

They were of the finest and softest Hungarian damask, 
wire stitched and lap-welded. Maybe that isn't the 
exact description of them, but they were something 
like that. The clerk who sold them to me told me 
what they were, and I know from the hushed and 
frightened voice with which he mentioned their pedi- 
gree that they were something out of the ordinary. 
It isn't always what the clerk tells you of a garment 
that convinces you of its superiority. It's the man- 
ner in which he tells it. You may not know what 
he is talking about, but that only convinces you that 
you must agree with him, or display your ignorance. 

Well, to go back to my shirts. I packed them up 
one day in a light-hearted manner, put them into a 
suit case along with some handkerchiefs and collars 
and cuffs, some pink pajamas for pale people, some 
sad, quiet socks with red polka dots on them, and gaily 
started out on a little business trip through Illinois. 
I stopped at a good many towns. Sometimes I stayed 
a week and sometimes a day, and whenver one of my 
aristocratic shirts became sullied by the dust-laden 
breezes of the Sucker State I sent it to the nearest 
laundry as a matter of course. But in the end I 
came home safe and sound and as fleshy as usual — 
but shirtless. 

What became of them? you ask. Ah, that's the 
question. Somewhere in ragbag wilderness of Illinois 
each shirt is quietly sleeping its last long sleep, in 
peace — or pieces, to speak more correctly, and I am 
shirtless and desolate. It's a sad tale. It reminds me 
of the affecting ballad entitled, "The Blue and the 
Gray," wherein the father between his sighs counts 



Second Suds Sayings 43 

up the resting places of his missing ones. So it is 
with my shirts : 

One lies down in old Watago, 

Many miles away; 
One was mangled in Chicago, 

I had worn it but a day. 
In the tubs at Chillicothe 

One was rubbed away; 
For my shirts I'm sadly mourning 

By night and by day. 

That's the whole story. I would send a brand new 
shirt, radiant in its youth and beauty, to some low- 
browed laundryowner and would get back a neck- 
band, or enough of the tail to make a handkerchief ; 
or in place of my white-frilled shirt I would get a rag- 
time affair, with brown polka dots all over it, giving 
it a sort of a varioloid effect. Illinois is one vast 
graveyard of my favorite shirts. I sent the shirt of 
my heart to a Springfield laundry and got back a hole 
with a button dangling from it. At Cairo I didn't get 
anything but the bill. 

I had hopes of saving the last one. I clung to it 
fondly and wore it so long that even a puff necktie 
wouldn't conceal the awful fact that it was dirty. I 
had to give it up at last, and reluctantly I sent it to a 
Quincy laundry. It came back minus a sleeve. At 
Galesburg the tail disappeared, and at Kewanee a 
coarse man carted it off in a laundry wagon and I 
saw it no more. I hope that its last moments were 
painless. 

I haven't any real hopes, of course, that the associa- 
tion will help me to find my shirts, but I just wanted 



44 Second Suds Sayings 

to tell my story because I know that at your conven- 
tion you will discuss from day to day the cussedness 
and total depravity of the customer and the troubles 
that make gray hair for the laundryowner. It is not 
good to dwell too much upon one side of a story, you 
know. Some of us customers don't pay our bills, I 
know, and some of us make fool kicks and develop 
large yellow streaks in ourselves while trying to find 
them on our freshly laundered collars. But then just 
Hsten to the tale of the shirt as I have told it between 
my sighs and let's call things square. 

I hope you will have a real good time at the con- 
vention. Associations are a good thing. They open a 
wide horizon to a man and let him expand and grow 
broad instead of narrow in his business. They com- 
bine the strength of the members and exert it unit- 
edly when there is anything to be accomplished — one 
supreme effort instead of one hundred little half- 
hearted tries. It brings all the experience and all the 
little fine points of one hundrd different members into 
a common pool and gives the strength of the whole to 
each member. Last of all it is a relaxation — a get ac- 
quainted time — a time when a man realizes for once 
any way that there is something in his business be- 
sides dollars and cents — that there may be good com- 
radeship, friendship, enjoyment — and a banquet once 
in a while, with cigars and a hemorrhage of oratory 
and good cheer afterwards. 

I believe in laundries. They are a good thing. Many 
a man obtains the only polish that ever comes to him 
in a journey through life from his laundry. A white 
shirt hides many a grimy skin, and a broad snowy shirt 



Second Suds Sayings 45 

front, when properly hedged about with a dress suit, 
makes a nine dollar clerk the peer, for the time being, 
of the oil magnate's son. The higher civilized the 
land the more laundries there are, and the higher and 
whiter the collars. There is no man so low as he who 
will not pay his laundry bills. The driven snow which 
used to be the standard for whiteness has had to go 
away back since the steam laundry was invented. One 
freshly laundered shirt is as white as two snowdrifts. 
But I have written far too much already. Hope 
you won't mind the affecting little tale that I have 
told you. I don't. It happened before there was a 
laundryowners' association in Illinois, and I know that 
accounts for it. Success to you and to the associa- 
tion. 



AROUND THE WORLD. 



By George Horton. 



Early in May last 'year the managers of Hearst's 
three great dailies, located in New York, Chicago and 
San Francisco, conceived the idea of starting three 
high school boys, one to be selected from each city, 
to tour the world against time, each one to take a 
different route and make the best time possible. I 
was selected to accompany Louis St. Clair Eunson, 
who represented the New York Journal. I joined him 
here at Chicago on May 22, and as the history of our 
trip was published fully in all the different papers, 
and daily bulletins displayed in front of the offices of 
each paper, the public was kept fully posted as to 
the different tourists. Unfortunately Eunson and I 
were delayed in Siberia, as the rivers there were too 
low to permit the passage of steamers. The Chicago 
boy made the trip in sixty-three days and had the 
advantage of us in Siberia, as he floated down the 
rivers in the shallow places in small boats, whereas 
we had to go against the stream and found it some- 
what difficult. 

I will try to give the readers of the National Laun- 
dry Journal an idea of what we had to contend with 
in the way of securing clean linen in the semi-civilized 
countries we journeyed through, and would like to 



Second Suds Sayings 47 

state that one who has never made the journey cannot 
fully appreciate the advantages offered by the modern, 
up-to-date, public steam laundries in the civilized coun- 
tries. 

Well, in the first place, a man don't keep partic- 
ularly clean when he is sleeping on Russian transports 
and disputing with three hundred unwashed Cossacks 
for a bit of deck to lie down upon. You don't put 
on a fresh collar every morning under those circum- 
stances. In fact, you don't wear any collar at all — 
but I'll come to that later. 

When preparing for a long journey, one naturally 
packs his trunk with reference to the nature of that 
journey. If he is traveling for a large commercial 
house, or is on a diplomatic mission, he will need a 
big supply of white shirts, collars, etc. Eunson and 
myself took very little linen with us, as we expected 
to be much of the time in a wild country and on the 
rail. The most comfortable and sensible thing I had 
in my grip was a package of colored shirts with cuffs 
and collars attached. I took along only two or three 
white shirts, and those to wear with my dress suit, 
for one is never safe in these days without a dress 
suit, even if he is going into the domains of King 
Menelick. I wore my "biled shirt" and swallowtail 
only twice on the whole trip, however, once on board 
the steamship Empress of India, from Vancouver to 
Yokohama, and once at Vladivostok, Siberia. At the 
latter place I went to the theatre with Greener, the 
American consul, and was very glad that I appeared 
in immaculate linen and dress suit, for I met a Rus- 
sian count, an American railroad king and two or three 



Second Suds Sayings 



other people of such quality, and they were all in 
swallowtails. 

If I were ever going across the sea again on an 
English boat I should take a smoking jacket with me 
and a larger supply of white shirts, as the bloody 
British always appear at dinner on shipboard in dinner 
jackets, and one feels like showing them that he knows 
a thing or two as well as they. 

We attempted to get some washing done on the 
Empress of India, but found that there were no laun- 
dry facilities on board, despite the fact that the crew 
were all Chinese. By tipping our room stewards we 
induced them to wash out some things for us, but — 
"no starchee, no ironee." We did not regret this 
very much, as we got our soiled underclothes washed 
up, and they are the things that one really feels like 
changing occasionally. And herein is the beauty of 
colored shirts, they do not look so very bad even when 
they are not ironed. But wha can imagine a more 
bloodless, rickety and God- forsaken looking thing than 
a white collar that has not been starched ? 

In Yokohama we only stopped one night. I tele- 
graphed to Hakodate, a northern port, and chartered 
a boat to cross the Japan sea, thus saving one week 
in time, and we • started thither almost immediately 
by rail. Our laundry work in Japan consisted of the 
simple process of throwing away our soiled clothes. 

Neither at Vladivostok, the most eastern port of 
Siberia, did we have much time, as we almost im- 
mediately took rail for Khabarovsk,, a squat Cossack 
village literally swimming in mud — a place to which 
no white man would ever go but for the fact that one 



Second Suds Sayings 49 

takes the steamer there for the long journey up the 
Amur and Shilka rivers. In Khabarovsk we found 
an American store, and the genial manager, a San 
Franciscan, was so delighted to see us that he nearly- 
fell on our necks. A more lonesome American I never 
saw. Through his assistance we managed to get on 
board a steamer the same night of our arrival. Our 
laundry work here consisted in throwing away more 
clothes and in buying a few nondescript articles that 
lasted until we got to Blagaveshensk, a distance of nine 
days on a zigzag river. We were very comfortable 
on this steamer, having a nice large stateroom all to 
ourselves. During this trip Eunson began to dig up 
his soiled shirts and give them a second wearing. He 
discovered that those discarded early in the game were 
clean in comparison with those now on his back. 
Cleanliness is only a matter of comparison. We are 
too finicky about such things here in civilization any- 
way. Why, some people here in Chicago put on a 
clean collar every morning ! 

Another laundry device which Eunson began to 
adopt at this point consisted in borrowing from me. 
We did not really grow disreputable and sick of our- 
selves till we passed Blagaveshensk. Beyond that 
point the river grows shallow and we were compelled 
to change boats nine times, each time taking one that 
was smaller and more crowded. The water continued 
to fall until navigation was entirely closed and we 
were obliged to take to the woods and walk for a 
week, hiring peasants to drag our baggage up the 
river in small boats. We were one month on the Amur 
and Shilka, and at each town we took on new detach- 



50 Second Suds Sayings 

ments of the Russian army returning from China. 
They were a tribe called Bouriaks, the dirtiest, sweat- 
iest, smelliest and most verminous chaps imaginable. 
They seem half Chinamen and half Indian, and we 
were compelled to sleep two days with them on the 
decks. They require no laundry work, neither did we 
while associating with them. Nevertheless we got an 
idea from the members of a Russian opera troupe that 
was traveling with us from Vladivostok to Moscow. 
These ladies spent much of their time washing their 
linen in the river at the numerous and prolonged 
stops. Eunson and I conceived the idea of washing 
our under flannels on our bodies by going in swim- 
ming with them on. I suggested this, as I had heard 
that it requires the most scientific treatment to wash 
an all-wool garment without shrinking it. We soaped 
our flannels all over and plunged in, slapping, squeez- 
ing and rubbing them with all our might. I suppose 
we did get some of the dirt out of them, but the dry- 
ing process was most uncomfortable, and they did 
shrink until they almost stopped the circulation of our 
blood and made our eyes pop out of our heads. 

It was on the Amur that we met Vraz, the famous 
Bohemian lecturer, and professor in the University 
of Prague. Vraz was a jolly fellow, splendid com- 
pany, who was always photographing everything and 
talking of instantaneous and time exposures. He 
bought a pair of trousers in Khabarof sk, flimsily made 
things that proved to be too tight for his corpulent 
person. When he went down to the edge of the river 
to wash out some shirts and handkerchiefs, the whole 
opera company and the Bouriack army assembled to 



Second Suds Sayings 51 

see the professor turn washerwoman. As soon as he 
stooped over his pants gave way with a loud report. 
I shouted at him, "Was that an instantaneous or time 
exposure, professor?" but he only glared at me and 
took to the woods. I carried him a needle and white 
thread and sewed his trousers so securely to his un- 
derclothes that he only succeeded in tearing them loose 
with the most extraordinary difficulty. He treated me 
coolly all the way to Berlin, where, one night in a res- 
taurant, over a bottle of genuine Rhine wine, he sud- 
denly burst out laughing and shouted: "It vas instan- 
taneous !" 

In Irkutsk we laid in a supply of clean underwear 
and some Russian negligee shirts, queer things with 
gaudily embroidered bosoms and collars. At Berlin 
we must have struck modern machinery and meth- 
ods at last, for we sent out our soiled clothing in the 
morning and got them all back nicely washed, starched 
and ironed at night. 

And that's what we did for laundry work around 
the world. 



THE OLD WAY. 



By Eugene Wood. 



Times have changed since we grown ups were 
boys. People don't wash any more. I don't mean, 
of course, that faces and necks are gloomy and som- 
bre with soot because folks lost the art of making 
a lather. Anybody who lives in Chicago can scrub 
his face and hands every ten minutes and then have 
nothing to brag of in the way of scrupulous cleanli- 
ness. But what I am trying to get at is that the 
old Blue Monday, the old terror, wash-day, a day 
of fasting and humiliation for the men folks, has 
forever fled. The blessed laundry has scared away 
this sour-visaged old bugaboo. 

In the school orations, and in the essays on the 
wonderful improvements of the age, there has been 
much fuss over the steam engine and telegraph, the 
telephone and the electric light, the printing press 
and the sewing machine, but when you come right 
down to it, the greatest boon ever conferred upon 
the race by the inventive genius of America has 
been the complete laundry with its patent "rig-a- 
ma-gigs" that put a lustre on shirt bosoms that a 
"she Samson" couldn't have got in the old days. 
Why, think of the kitchen on an ironing, day, some 
time when the sun was turned on full head, when 



Second Suds Sayings 53 

there wasn't a breath of air stirring, and the old 
topknot hen stood in the shade of the currant bush- 
es, wings drooping, neck stretched and bill open, 
panting like a lizard. Souls alive! how hot it was 
in that kitchen with the irons heating ! The women 
of the house were red-faced and perspiring. The 
flat irons were hot and heavy, and there's no use 
talking, it was a hard job. No wonder mother was 
crusty and little inclined to grant favors when the 
other boys came up the alley and whistled and held 
up two fingers to signify that they were going 
down to the old swimming-hole and wanted you 
to go long, and mother said : "No, you've got to saw 
enough wood to keep the irons hot ;" it did seem like 
pretty hard lines, and you thought as you perspired 
over that saw buck, of how cool it was under the 
old sycamore tree, splashing round in the water, and 
you got so provoked that you said, "Darn it !" right 
out loud and looked around apprehensively to see 
if the sky was going to fall. Don't blame mother 
for it. Blame ironing day. 

But it was wash-day that was the real affliction. 
Everybody got up early on wash-day — a name of 
direful import and dreadful memory. Summer- 
time and a clear, warm day were auspicious seasons 
for wash-day, but look back over the past and think 
how few nice, clean, beautiful days came on Mon- 
day. Isn't it a fact now, that almost every time 
you can remember real plainly, it blew up rain, and 
all the nice clean clothes were whipped off the line 
and sent whirling into the dirt, or else it was cold 
enough to freeze the ears off a brass monkey ? Win- 



54 Second Suds Sayings 

ter time is when wash-day spreads itself, and goes 
about wrecking happy homes. Oh, what a stack of 
stove-wood had to be cut for Monday, and what a 
lot of water had to be pumped and carried in from 
the cistern to the kitchen! Then there was the 
line to be stretched. There was a ring in the cor- 
ner of the kitchen — outside of course — and there 
is where one end of the line was tied. Then it went 
over to the wood-house, across to the big apple tree, 
then back again to a post with a hole in the top of 
it and then over to the elm. And that line was either 
too tight or too loose, one or the other. It never 
was just right any way you could fix it, and the 
clothes props were always splitting or slipping 
down or doing some fool thing or other that there 
wasn't any living occasion for them to do. And 
land of Goshen! but a fellow's fingers used to get 
cold before it was all done. But there it was, that 
line had to be stretched or — well, it isn't necessary 
to specify the trouble that might arise. Boys have 
been known to shirk such duties, and they have 
been known to regret it very poignantly, and to 
make vehement protests that they never would do 
so again. No doubt these promises were made un- 
der, pain and duress, but they were made just the 
same, and there was plenty more pain and duress 
where the other came from. But that's not here 
nor there. 

Well, the wash boiler was full of clothes stewing 
away, and the window panes dripped with dewy 
moisture, and the tubs steamed with hot suds, and 
the women went around with their skirts doubled- 



Second Suds Sayings 55 

up and pinned behind in a mysterious sort of way. 
A woman never looks at her best when she's over a 
wash tub. There has been a good deal of poetical 
slopping around about "Nellie at the wash-tub" 
and all that, but in order to be really romantic, the 
tub must be out of doors under an appletree in the 
sweet spring time, when the fragrant petals are 
showering down, and the air is full of the subtle 
odor of the wild plum. And Nellie must be a bux- 
om lass with brown curling hair and a cheek like 
the rose. As a general thing, however, a woman 
doesn't look her best when she is scrubbing the 
grime out of a shirt over the washboard in a steam- 
ing kitchen. A man doesn't like to remember his 
mother so. He likes to think of her as she sits read- 
ing the bible or kneeling in the pew at church, or 
tucking him into bed at night after he has said his 
prayers and has given his last good-night kiss. 

Scrub, scrub ! It was weary work doing the 
week's wash. But there was love in it. When you 
come to think of it, there was just as much tender 
affection in the washing and ironing and mending 
of the clothes as there was in the tender kiss and 
the mother's prayer. Her heart went out just the 
same, and we think of all the acts of self-sacrifice and 
the labor she bore that we might look tidy and 
neat. Ah, well! sometimes we don't appreciate 
that until it is too late, when the tired old hands are 
folded across the breast, never again to do those 
little kindly acts for us, never again to take up the 
burden of life. It was a hard time that the mother 
of a family had in the old days, and it is something 



56 Second Suds Sayings 

that America can be proud of, that so many inven- 
tions have been made to lighten women's work. 
Stop and think how much less it would have taken 
out of your own mother's life, if the modern laun- 
dry had been ready then to have done the weekly 
washing, cheaply, promptly and well. 

For the washerwoman was a shiftless old thing. 
She didn't half do the work. She didn't come for the 
work when she said she would, and she was just as 
careless about bringing it back. The things weren't 
done well. They weren't clean and the bosoms 
weren't near stiff enough, while the collars and cuffs 
were sights to be seen. Sometimes the things 
would be yellow as saffron, and sometimes they'd 
be the color of a hard-boiled egg. Well, there was 
some excuse for the poor old thing. She was just 
about worked to death anyhow, and taking in wash- 
ing was just the next thing to going to the poor 
house. 

But did you ever notice how brains can dignify 
any business? When an occupation is poorly paid 
and requires only brute strength, folks turn up 
their noses at it. But let somebody come along with 
brains in his head and think up a way to do all 
that by machinery, so that it is done cheaply and 
well, and it becomes a first-class industry. And 
there is no better example of it than right in the 
laundry business. Blessed be the steam laundry, 
and blessed be the man who comes and gets the 
wash punctually, and fetches it back when he says 
he will. For in this enlightened age, when the 
blind forces of nature do the hard work, the hus- 



Second Suds Sayings 57 

band doesn't have to come home and eat that no- 
toriously bad meal, the wash-day dinner; he doesn't 
have to endure the miseries of ironing day, and what 
is more to the purpose, his wife doesn't have to age 
herself prematurely by stooping over the wash- 
board and stewing over the ironing table. All that 
is past. It is an age of humanity, and one of these 
days it's going to be a pretty decent sort of a world 
to live in. 



LETTER TO CHARLES DOWST. 



By Bill Nye. 



I hope you will pardon me, a total stranger to 
you, for coming to you with my great woe, but I 
felt like leaning on someone at this time, and those 
who are acquainted with you, told me that they al- 
ways considered you a good man to lean on. 

I wish that you could use your influence through 
your excellent paper, toward rescuing clothing from 
the destruction which some of the laundries 
throughout the country are now instituting. That 
is the reason I now address these lines to you. Oh, 
sir ! could you not arise in your might, and with the 
besom of your wrath, proclaim vengeance? 

Perhaps, however, a besom would be a poor thing 
to do that with, if so, use anything else that will 
make a noise, so that you call attention to the 
awful ruin of clothing which is now going on 
throughout the length and breadth of our land. 

This is a small matter to those who have a wealth 
of clothes, but to me it is no trifling thing. When 
a man has to wear Linene collars and cuffs and a 
celluloid dickey in order to obtain coal, is it wrong 
for him to arise in his wrath and protest when the 
laundry ruins his shirt? 

Two years ago, while in New York, I purchased 



Second Suds Sayings 59 

a pair of white shirts with reinforced bosoms and all 
linen bands, for which I paid seventy-five cents, and 
received a Waterbury watch as a slight testimonial 
of regard from the proprietor. 

Today these shirts look like the abomination of 
destruction spoken of by Daniel, the prophet. I think 
it was Daniel, but that's neither here nor there. 
Suffice it that I attribute it all to the laundry. I 
was not saying this to enlist sympathy from the 
public at Christmas time and secure more shirts and 
another Waterbury watch. I am doing it in good 
faith because I believe that the laundries are doing 
a great work for this country, and I want to see 
them succeed and yet I want them to be easier on 
the clothing. 

While I was postmaster under a Republican form 
of government, I wore linen collars almost exclu- 
sively because I was told by the Chairman of the 
Territorial Republican Committee that the dignity 
of my office would not admit of paper collars. So I 
bought a pair of fine E. & W. collars and a pair of 
double-header cuffs of the same kind, but before 
spring the laundries had put a four-inch fringe on 
the outfit, and had charged me four dollars and six 
bits for doing it. 

That was what first called my attention to this 
great field of reform, and I said to myself then and 
there that if I could get "a good besom of wrath" 
the next time I went to Chicago, I would use it on 
this mighty evil. 

No man wants to go about with a rim of white 
"fuzz" around his wrists or tickling his neck like a 



60 Second Suds Sayings 

set of Mormon throat whiskers. No man wants the 
top of his collars in two weeks' time to feel like the 
edge on the brow of our modern moonshine whiskey. 
Clergymen complain frequently of inattention 
and lack of interest on the part of the men in their 
congregations, but fully half the trouble is caused 
by suffering, occasioned by feather-edge collars, and 
I ask the gentlemanly laundryowner to remember 
that while cleanliness is next to godliness a rough 
collar stirreth up strife. 

I will pass over a few trifling errors made in 
returning my laundry way-bill, for that may occur 
everywhere. Before I patronized the laundry at 
all, I had my washing done by a poor woman who 
had no other way of supporting an indigent hus- 
band, and though she was a good woman with a 
pure heart and par-boiled hands, she frequently 
erred in sending home my clothes. Many articles 
were sent to me in this way which I could not pos- 
sibly utilize. I was young then and the great un- 
tried world was still before me. I was a bachelor, 
too, and it worried me to think that a man could be- 
come so warped and deformed as to wear some of 
the clothes that came to me in this way. I used to 
think that men were certainly deteriorating and 
becoming more and more effeminate, I felt sorry 
for my sex. 

One thing, however, I must say in favor of the 
laundryowners before I close. They are doing a 
good work in drying their clothing indoors. To a 
person of fine tastes and keen sensibilities, nothing 
is more shocking than to drive or stroll past a large. 



Second Suds Sayings 61 

inflated two weeks' family wash as it waves its 
long wet arms and puffy, icy legs toward the zenith. 
You are certaining doing a great work and any- 
thing I can do to assist you, will be cheerfully per- 
formed. Of course, at my age, I could not at pres- 
ent, stand over a wash tub all day and chase a hick- 
ory shirt up and down a wash board in the interest 
of science, but anything in the way of influence or 
endorsement of your work, provided you do not put 
a fringe on my collars or glue the pockets of my 
white vest together, so that they have to be opened 
with a cold chisel, I will extend to you now or at 
any time in the future. 

Please tell the boys to continue to send their 
wagon around to my place as they have been doing 
heretofore, and oblige, yours truly. 



A THRIFTY WOMAN. 



By Colonel Will Visscher. 



A laundry supply salesman had made an appoint- 
ment with me to meet him at the Chicago Laundry 
Club, and while I was waiting for my friend I made 
the acquaintance of a north side laundryowner, who 
told me the following story : 

"A lady with the proud bearing of a dowager duch- 
ess alighted from her electric coupe in front of my 
laundry. She had driven the car herself and, as there 
was no servant present, she carried a bundle that she 
had brought with her as though it were a favorite 
grandchild. It had the appearance, however, of a fair- 
sized lot of shirts. 

" 'Here comes trouble,' said I to myself, as I sent 
a clerk to meet the lady and to steer her against the 
superintendent. 

" 'I desire to see the proprietor personally,' she said 
to the clerk, and there was no way out of it for me. 
In a voice that was modulated to the extreme courtesy 
that is demanded by such situations, I called out cheer- 
ily, 'Show the lady right in, Alice,' and I met her at 
the door of my office, escorted her to a chair by the 
desk, at the same time signalling to Alice to relieve the 
lady of the package, which Alice did, placing it on a 
table. 



Second Suds Sayings 63 

"The lady told her name, and I at once recognized 
it as the name of a good customer, a man of means, 
known as a good fellow and club man, and the owner 
of a handsome residence on Sheridan Road. 

" 'Any trouble about the laundry, madam ?' I asked. 
The reply was a distinct relief, as I had expected a 
complaint about the laundering, although I knew that 
in my establishment such a matter would be an acci- 
dent that could be quickly adjusted. I had a terrible 
apprehension of indignant and fault-finding words 
from the lady, but she only said: 'Not the slightest 
trouble; I came to see you on a little matter of busi- 
ness.' 

" 'Delighted ; please proceed.' 

" 'You have to buy the tissue-paper envelopes in 
which the shirts are delivered, and also the silver, 
agatine and wooden buttons that come in the gar- 
ments, do you not?' 

" 'Yes, madam, we buy them in large quantities.' 

" 'Exactly. Then I want to sell you some, as I have 
a large quantity of them. I directed my maid to save 
all of these things, and she has done so for many 
months. I have had the envelopes carefully removed 
when the shirts were delivered, and they are in as good 
a condition as before they were used. Of course, the 
buttons are perfect.' 

"Instantly I perceived that this lady was merely try- 
ing to secure a little extra pin money. It occurred to 
me that possibly the husband was not as free with his 
purse at home as he was at the club. But there is a 
well defined streak of humor in me, and I determined 
to exploit it; so I said: 'All right, madam, I will be 



64 Second Sxjds Sayings 

glad to credit your husband's account with whatever 
amount may be agreed upon for the envelopes and but- 
tons.' I intended to offer about two or three times the 
price that the articles were worth, although I had in 
stock enough of such things to last my establishment 
indefinitely. The buttons she had would cost me, at a 
rough estimate, about thirty cents per thousand, and 
the envelopes one-half a cent each. 

" *Oh, no !' the lady replied with suddenness and 
vehemence, *I want cash for these things. I have been 
at infinite care and pains to have the maid preserve 
them, and I wish personally to realize upon the labor 
and saving.' 

" 'Oh, just as you please, madam. We are probably 
short on these envelopes and buttons at this moment, 
and I shall be glad to take them and pay you for them 
in cash.' 

"Then the package was opened. It contained some- 
thing like a hundred of the envelopes and several hun- 
dred of the buttons. Twenty-five cents would have 
been a large price for the buttons if they were pur- 
chased in the usual way. The lady, no doubt, had a 
somewhat exalted idea of the value of these goods, and 
by much diplomacy and business tact, without stating 
the real value of the stuffy I led her to understand that 
I was displaying great commercial acumen in making 
the purchase from her. She produced from her silver 
purse an accurate list that gave the number of each 
kind of button — silver plate, agatine, wood and black 
enamel — that she had, and also the amount of shirt 
envelopes. 

"With fairly good grace the lady accepted about 



Second Suds Sayings 65 

five times the worth of the goods that she had re- 
turned. She made her departure in a queenly way, 
having not the sHghtest idea of how severely she had 
assaulted my practical business sense in the trans- , 
action. However, the Sheridan Road home continues 
to patronize my laundry ; it is probable that the envel- 
opes and buttons are still being saved by the lady. 

"I have been wondering ever since whether she was 
saving for church or for charity, or to obtain enough 
money for matinee tickets. I will bet a good dinner 
that no other laundry could get her husband's work, 
even if it should offer to do it for nothing." 



EVOLUTION. 



By Wm. E. Fitch. 



When you were a wash-man 
And I drove the cart, 

In the vanishing long ago, 
We little dreamed 
As our foreheads streamed, 

How the Industry would grow. 

When you did the marking 
And I "Polished" shirts. 

We thought we had reached our goal; 
But a flash of light 
Came out of the night, 

Making merry with "script and scroll." 

When I was the foreman. 
And you were the boss, 

We were sure that "The world was ours' 
But we outgrew the space 
And we entered the race, 

For something to equal our powers. 

When you won the honors. 
At home and abroad. 

And I trailed along in your wake, 
We little knew, 
As ambition grew. 

That "The Law" never makes a mistake. 
* * * 

So buckle on tightly 
Your armor and belt, 

And strive on, as never before. 
You'll win if you try, 
And you never say die — 

Opportunity's now at your door. 



Second Suds Sayings 67 

The world has no use for a quitter, a piker or flitter. 
If you want fame get in the game. Play for a place 
in the world's work; don't be a shirk. There is just 
as much chance for you as there ever has been for any- 
one. If you are not getting ahead it is you who needs 
an investigating committee, not the world or the other 
fellow or any of the thousand and one threadbare ex- 
cuses which have been worn thin by over use. 

The place to begin is at the bottom of the ladder. 
The fun is all in the climb. Place your "stint" high, 
then when you reach it you will say, "Get thee hence, 
for this is not thy rest." 

Ask any man who has achieved largely in the af- 
fairs of life, and he will tell you that he had all his 
fun in the scramble for place. 

The world is going ahead. Nothing can stop it. It 
is "The Law." If you are not going ahead with it, 
you are one of the broken cogs in the wheels of prog- 
ress and you must get yourself fixed else you will de- 
ter others. You will have to take part in the battle 
for place or you will lose the race. You have in you 
the material out of which is grown true success, just 
as you also have in you the corresponding failure 
qualities. It is up to you as to which qualities you 
are going to use. Positive qualities produce positive 
results ; negative qualities produce negative results. 
Take your choice. If you would go up the ladder, 
cultivate and use your positive qualities, such as faith, 
hope, love, optimism, truthfulness, honesty and indus- 
try. If you want to be in the don't-care column of 
the what's-the-use brigade, encourage the negative 
qualities of doubt, despair, hate, pessimism, lying, dis- 
honesty and laziness. 



68 Second Suds Sayings 

For this world to develop faster and beCome a bet- 
ter place to live, love and have our being, it requires 
only the development of individual character. Do not 
for one moment figure that you do not count. In a 
great many ways, you now have just as much to say 
about things as any other individual and in just pro- 
portion to your personal development will you gain in 
power, poise and plenty. Your business can be noth- 
ing more nor less than the reflection of your own per- 
sonality. If it is dwarfed and warped, look inwardly 
for the trouble. If it is going along satisfactorily, you 
may be sure that you are running on the right track 
and it only requires a close lookout for obstacles and 
a good head of steam to keep you steadily on your 
course. You are a unit in the grand scheme, of the 
universe. Never let it filter into your brain that a 
unit and a cipher are one and the same thing. Never 
admit in your worst moment that you are a cipher, but 
be a unit and a good one. Have a purpose in life and. 
life will treat you on the square. 

There is a great work to be done. Are you doing 
your share, or are you one of the ones who stand back 
and tell how the other fellow ought to do it? Have 
you considered the matter of improving conditions as 
a part of your business, just as much as it is a part 
of any other one man's? If you have not you have 
been seeing things "as in a glass, darkly." We are 
all prone to shift responsibilities and blame the other 
fellow when things don't go as we think they should, 
but if we have not done our full share toward help- 
ing those who are trying to better conditions, then 
we have no kick coming and it is becoming of us to 
keep still. If you can't be a booster, don't be a knocker. 



Second Suds Sayings 69 

It is always the "open season" for making good. No 
use to whine over lost opportunities. There is another 
cargo just off yonder. Get out and try. Don't have 
the big head, but by the same token never under- 
estimate your own value. In a large measure you are 
marking your own goods; be sure you do not cut 
prices. You will be accepted very largely at your own 
rating and if you place yourself on the back-number 
or damaged-goods counter, you will have to go at a 
"bargain." 

Things, or rather times, do change, and if we would 
make good, we must change with them. Thank God 
for the man who "changes his mind." Don't call him 
inconsistent or shallow. He is awake. Yesterday is 
gone. That which was in season yesterday is out of 
date today. The man who is doing things in this 
great world of human endeavor is the man who has 
eyes front — not the fellow who is looking backward 
and is never so happy as when telling how much bet- 
ter everything was in the "good old days." 

Evolution — that is the word. Everything and every- 
body is undergoing the process of evolving. "Nothing 
is permanent but change." Hence, there is na occa- 
sion for us to hibernate. If things don't suit us we 
have all the tools with which to alter them. It is only 
up to us to get busy and if opportunity does not seem 
to be beating a tattoo on our door, put out some bait. 
Look around a little, hustle. Just as like as not she 
has been hunting for us but went to the door of some 
live one, expecting to find us there. 

From the rude and crude life of the Cave Dwellers, 
man has evolved to his present state of civilization and 



70 Second Suds Sayings 

culture. Who among us can say what the next gen- 
eration will do, and then the next and the next and the 
next, until there will finally be a race so perfect that 
we will be regarded in the light in which we now re- 
gard the Cave Dwellers? Is there not abundant rea- 
son, then, why we should make the best of our lives, 
knowing as we do that we are a part of God's great 
plan and that our duty is, and our pleasure should be, 
in playi^ig well the part assigned to us ? 

If we aspire we must perspire. Trying beats sigh- 
ing. Success is not a ready made article and cannot 
be bought in the open market. It must be earned. 
And the thing needed most with which to earn it is 
true education. A process of nourishment and use. 
Not a cramming of the head with so-called knowledge, 
but real learning. The knowledge of the how and why 
of the thing. The use of what we know is what makes 
education valuable and this is one reason why the 
"University of Hard Knocks" is such a valued insti- 
tution. 

So then : If you lack education, remember the U. of 
H. K. It is always at hand. Enroll at once as a stu- 
dent. Make use of what you learn at that institution. 
Quit sighing and try trying. Have an end in view and 
strive for it, steadily, patiently and honestly. Then if 
you don't find that the top of the ladder is growing 
nearer, come around and see me, and I will refund 
your money. 



GETTING LAUNDRY IN WAR. 



By Richard Henry Little. 



It's a big task to keep an army fresh and sweet and 
clean in war time. The Russian army solved this prob- 
lem in a most ingenious way. So did the war corre- 
spondents. They stayed dirty. But do not chide us. 
Heaven knows we yearned to be clean, but circum- 
stances were against us. Our dreams of home were 
mixed with hazy nebulous images of fresh laundered 
shirts and soft white "nighties" and dainty "hankies." 
If at any time we could have walked down the loud 
smelling streets of Moukden-and run into a full fledged 
Chicago laundry in full blast we would have burst into 
tears of joy and thanksgiving. 

I can well remember when Archibald went home and 
we were all making our little farewell speeches. Mc- 
Cormick sent a Chinese ring, that he had taken away 
from his maf oo, back to his sweetheart in Indiana, and 
Hamilton shot a bullet through a pack of letters and 
poured ink over them and told Archibald to describe 
to the beautiful lady to receive them how the heroic 
Hamilton had almost shed his life's blood to keep those 
precious letters from the insolent foe. We all had 
last requests and last words and tokens and all sorts 
of things for the faithful Archibald to deliver to the 
loved ones at home. All but Denny. Denny was strug- 



72 Second Suds Sayings 

gling, even writing with some great emotion. We 
found out afterwards that it was some great emotion, 
although we supposed at the time that it was fleas. He 
pushed his way into the little sad-eyed group and we 
all made way for him, partly because it was his turn 
to say good-bye and partly because he had just re- 
turned from a two weeks' stay in the trenches and 
smelt most uncommon vile. 

"Archie," said George, with a great sob swelling 
up in his throat, "Archie, old man, I want to ask just 
one thing of you before you go. I want you to do 
something for me after you get back to God's coun- 
try." He paused and we all wept — George was so pa- 
thetic. "You bet I will, George," said Archie, "I'll 
hunt her up and say anything you tell me. I don't 
care if I have to hunt all over the U. S. of N, A." 
"It isn't that, Archie," said George, "it isn't that. But 
it's this, Archie." George's voice faltered, but pulling 
himself together with a great effort, he said, "I want 
you, Archie, to do this thing for me after you get to 
New York. I want you to take this old shirt of mine 
home and get it washed and starched and everything, 
and put it on, wear it up to a photographer's and'-get 
it photographed, and send me the picture. If I could 
only see a picture of this shirt all nice and clean again 
I think I could be happy." 

"George," said Archie, "anything but that. Do you 
think I want to be quarantined at every port the ship 
stops? Do you think I want to have people holding 
their noses as I ride across the country to New York? 
Can I afford to be arrested as a plague suspect? And 
besides the hopelessness of the task you give me. There 



Second Suds Sayings 73 

are only one thousand seven hundred and fifty soap 
factories in the United States. With the limited 
amount of cleansing preparations they put out how 
could any appreciable effect be made upon that shirt? 
No, George, keep your shirt ; drive it up into a corner ; 
beat it into submission ; soak it in carbolic acid and put 
it on again and keep on wearing it, George, but I will 
send you a picture of me, of myself, the first time I 
get a nice, new, fresh laundered shirt on, and maybe 
that will help some." 

And with that Archie went away. 

Environment has much to do in changing old no- 
tions and ideals. We were most unhappy at first in 
Manchuria, and then, like the Russian army, we began 
to consider the Chinese — how they grow. The Chinese 
do not worry about laundries and the price of soap. 
The Chinaman in summer wears only a shirt and 
"trousies." This uniform is at once adapted to the 
climate and to the peculiar conditions of Chinese 
life. How hard it would be for a Chinese gentleman 
of Manchuria if he wanted to sit down in the busiest 
corner of Moukden, if he had to take off a coat and 
vest, collar and necktie, every time he wanted to take 
off his shirt in order to indulge in his favorite diver- 
sion of hunting the festive little flea. Customs are so 
different in different countries. 

In America when two gentlemen meet in front of 
the post office and find time for a little chat they ad- 
journ to the nearest place and confab over the tops 
of the highballs. In Moukden, when two Chinese 
gentlemen find opportunity to chat pleasantly on things 
and events, they sit down and each one removes his 



Second Suds Sayings 



only upper garments, and while they gossip he hunts 
industriously for the elusive little flea. I do not speak 
the language, but I judge from long experience that 
flea catching with the Chinese takes the place of chess, 
or jack straws, or checkers with us. From the exult- 
ant sounds made when one of the Chinese gentlemen 
catches a "skipper" I think he scores one, and if he 
catches more during the conversation than the other 
fellow — he wins. I kept score one day of a little 
group in front of the Moukden bank. My faithful cook 
was one of the party engaged in the delightful Man- 
churian pastime. He caught fifty-nine while the other 
man was still six up with four to play. 

As the fall weather comes on, and the cold winds 
begin to blow, the Chinese commence adding additional 
garments. As it grows colder and colder they put on 
more, and more suits of clothes until they are wear- 
ing their entire wardrobe. The Chinese do not take 
off their clothes at night. The would only have to 
put them on again in the morning, and besides it saves 
blankets and fires, so they waddle about swelled to 
most unusual proportions until the gentle springtime 
breezes begin to blow. Then, the Chinese commence 
to shed one suit at a time until finally when the "good 
old summer time" is fully returned again they are back 
to the original uniform, the "shirt and trousies." 

The Russian army learned from the Chinese. The 
army forgot to worry much about laundries and mere- 
ly added more clothes as the cold weather came on and 
began shedding them as it grew towards spring. It is 
a hideous military secret, and I hate to betray it, but it 
is a fact that, never once during the whole war, and it 



Second Suds Sayings 75 

lasted a year, did the Russian army wash its socks. 
This is a shocking revelation and I hasten to add that 
this was due to three reasons. First, there were no 
laundries with the Russian army; second, the munifi- 
cent salary of thirty-six cents in gold received by each 
soldier every month did not permit of their enjoying 
such a luxury as laundry bills even if there had been 
laundries to make the bills, and, thirdly — I hate to give 
the third reason. I was sworn when I entered the 
Russian army not to betray military secrets. But the 
war is over and what I am about to tell now cannot 
give comfort or assistance to the swollen foe. So I 
will speak. Listen. Do not speak of this to anyone 
outside of laundry circles, because I don't want the 
Czar to find out that I told it. He might get peevish 
over it. 

But the Russian army had no socks. 

Consequently, even if there had been laundries in 
Manchuria the army could not have had its socks 
washed. The gallant defenders of "All the Russias," 
I repeat, for this is a solemn truth, did not wear socks. 
It wore a linen rag about the shape and size of a big 
handkerchief on each foot. They would wrap these 
deftly around the feet, tuck in the ends and pull on 
its boots. These foot cloths the soldiers occasionally 
washed. I have seen whole battalions of sad-eyed 
Cossacks dabbling their foot rags in a limpid pool dur- 
ing the halt for dinner. They never bothered much 
about washing other things, but the foot cloths got a 
more or less thorough laundering every once in a 
while. Perhaps the soldiers grew careless about wash- 
ing their shirts, because of the uselessness of such 
proceedings, owing to the sheepskin coats which they 



76 Second Suds Sayings 

wore. Most of the sheepskin coats were made very 
hurriedly and the tanning process had not been thor- 
ough. Some of the coats were made so quickly that I 
do not believe they were entirely dead, and I sympa- 
thized with a soldier I saw one day industriously beat- 
ing his coat with an ax when he saw an ofificer ap- 
proaching. The officer stopped in amazement and 
asked the soldier why he was mauling his sheepskin 
coat with an ax? 

"Excellency." replied the truthful soldier, "I do not 
think the sheep is yet dead." 

But the majority of the sheepskin coats were dead. 
Oh, very dead. They were so dead that common de- 
cency should have demanded their immediate burial. 
They were of the delicate odor of — did any of you 
ever happen to visit a glue factory during business 
hours ? Well, anyhow, those coats would have attract- 
ed the attention of the Board of Health of Moukden 
only there was no Board of Health of Moukden. The' 
point is, what good would it have done to have washed 
a shirt and made it all nice and clean and sweet if 
right over the shirt the soldier had to put one of these 
sheepskin coats? If that shirt had been washed with 
twenty-five different brands of hand soap and scented 
with all the "eau de's" there are in a downtown Chi- 
cago drug store, that sheepskin coat would have seized 
those delicious odors and choked them to death in a 
second. Besides, after a soldier had gone around 
smelling that coat for a few days his olfactory nerves 
were so paralyzed that the odor of fifty barrels of attar 
of roses would have been unnoticed. 

So thus the army pursued the peaceful tenor of its 
way in Manchuria. 



THE WASHMAN'S STORY. 



By Frank H. Spearman. 



A party of laundry machinery, supply men and a 
few customers were seated one evening- at the old 
round table in the dining room of the Chicago Ath- 
letic Club. It had been rather a late dinner and the 
hands of the big clock over the cashier's desk were 
pointing to nine. 

In the quiet incense of the smoke that curled 
from their cigars, they were deep in a heart to heart 
talk about the tribulations of the laundry business. 

The restless man of the party, the machinery 
manufacturer, took up a-napkin to illustrate a point 
he was making. As the conversation focused on 
some gray streaks painfully apparent in the hem, 
the discussion went hard and fast into the use of 
bleaches. 

"It is a little curious," remarked the laundryown- 
er, "that this, one of the finest clubs in the country, 
would allow the linen to come to the table in this 
condition when a little oxalic acid would correct it." 

"Very true," observed a voice from an adjoining 
table, "provided it was properly used." 

The party turned their heads to see who made the 
remark. At a small table to their right a gentleman 



78 Second Suds Sayings 

in evening dress had just begun his coffee and a 
lighted cigar. 

"Pardon me," he said, "for the very commonplace 
remark. You gentlemen I am sure have forgotten 
more than I shall ever know about bleaching. But 
one or two somewhat painful experiences in my life 
have led me to great exactness in washroom work." 

"Why," blurted the supply man, who is popular 
regardless of his abrupt way. "What do you know 
about washroom work?" 

There was nothing in the stranger's dress to indi- 
cate that he knew anything about any kind of laun- 
dry work, further than the immaculate full dress 
shirt he wore. His manner and appearance indi- 
cated only the man of leisure and wealth that his 
tone bore out. 

"More," returned the stranger pleasantly, "than 
you would at first sight believe." 

It looked like a story, and the six men of the laun- 
dry business faced squarely about and demanded 
that the intruder draw up his chair and get his legs 
under their table. 

"It is a kind of an old yarn now," he said, "but 
there was a time, and not so many years ago either, 
when I handled a few washers. 

"How I got to Colorado I need not explain, but I 
had a little money when I struck Denver and I grub- 
staked a kid of a fellow who thought he could locate 
something in the way of a gold proposition that 
would make the Independence and the Victor look 
cheap. He was a slender young chap but straight 
as a line shaft and true as steel. He was married ; 



Second Suds Sayings 79 

had a slip of a wife that a good ordinary north wind 
would blow off the sidewalk any time if he did not 
keep hold of her. But they were all right. The 
young fellow had got away with the last dollar they 
could rake and scrape, and when I stood by with 
enough money to start him again nobody could have 
told them there was very much the matter with me. 
I didn't tell them it was my last thousand, nor did I 
mention it when the wife came back four months 
later with Bob Rogers in a box. A little exposure 
and pneumonia accounted for his widow having 
poor Bob's body back in Denver. 

"We buried him, I cleaned up what little bills 
there were, as there was no one else to do it. I 
said good-bye to Mrs. Kittie Rogers and started for 
Cripple Creek to make or break. I got there with 
eighteen dollars in my pocket, and eight months 
later, after I had lain in the hospital sixteen weeks 
with typhoid fever, I borrowed the price of a rail- 
road ticket back to Denver and began walking the 
streets hunting for a job. I was ready for anything 
— any old thing that would keep three meals a day 
going. 

"One day I was way up in the residence portion 
looking for work when I entered a laundry. Now, 
whatever made me go into that laundry I will never 
tell you. It was not to get any work done, because 
the only shirt I had was on my back, and I had no 
idea of taking it off unless the board of health or- 
dered it off. But I went in and asked for a job. 

" 'We do not need any help except an experienced 
washman.' 



80 Second Suds Sayings 

"If that's what you are looking for, I'm your 
huckleberry. I have been washing for eight months 
at Cripple Creek. And that wasn't far wrong, for I 
had renovated my shirt in every live stream of water 
in that part of the country. 

" 'What kind of soap do you use?' 

" 'Any kind,' says I. And if he had asked me if I 
could get along with none at all I should have 
answered yes. 

"It was pretty rank, I know, but I bluffed that fel- 
low — and I guess he didn't know much more about 
the business than I did — until I got the job of run- 
ning the washroom. I was pretty busy that day, as 
you may guess, chasing around for points, and that 
night I sneaked down to one of the big hotels I used 
to put up at when I had the price and got a washing 
formula from the laundry there. It was a dandy, 
too — only it didn't specify just how much water to 
run into the wheel. 

"I didn't propose to let a little thing like that stop 
me, and as I had always been successful in the 
creeks with plenty of water I made up my mind to 
have plenty of water in the cylinder, even if the 
supply was controlled by an eastern monopoly and 
the water tax pretty high. 

"Well, I turned on the steam and commenced to 
put in the soap. 

"Gentlemen, I carried pailsful of soap to that 
washer till my legs gave out, trying to raise a suds, 
and when I nearly emptied the soap tank without 
getting any suds to speak of I began to get scared. 
I just sat down and tried to think. I reasoned it 



Second Suds Sayings 81 

out, all by my lonesome, that it would not do ; that 
you couldn't fill a cylinder half full of water and 
expect the garments in it to crawl up the sides and 
tumble down. So I begun to run the high priced 
water into the sewer until I had just about two 
inches left in the inside cylinder; then I started up 
again. When the man in the front part of the shop 
came back to cuss me he found the suds climbing 
out of the top of the machine and running clear up to 
the shafting. 

"That was the first and most valuable lesson I 
ever learned in washing. 

"Fortunately the work ran very light that week 
and by Saturday I thought I was a pastmaster. I 
spent all day Sunday reading a book I'd borrowed, 
and the very next day I got into such a box that I 
have never done any Sunday work since. 

"I saw in that book that oxalic acid was recom- 
mended as a bleach, and reasoned that it could be 
used during the sudsing process, so it would get the 
sweat stains and yellow streaks out of the goods 
quicker. I ran some into the wheel the same time I 
did the soap. I expect you know what I saw when 
I looked inside. If I had ran a barrel of New Or- 
leans molasses into my linen I shouldn't have found 
as bad a dose as I had when I opened the machine. 

"Fortunately, the engineer was a kind hearted 
fellow, and when I showed him the paste he told me 
to boil the clothes out with a strong alkali; and I 
got the mess out of the way along toward evening. 

"All this time I had never seen the boss of the in- 
stitution, and that seemed to me sort of queer. 



82 Second Suds Sayings 

When I asked the engineer about it he said the boss 
was up at Cripple Creek for a few days and would 
be back Wednesday. 

"Of course I was anxious to make a good show- 
ing for the boss so I got down early Wednesday 
morning. There was two days' work in the wash- 
room that morning. So I said to myself, 'No more 
experiments for me.' 

"When I got through my rinse. I found my bleach 
jar empty, but I knew they used chloride of lime as 
a bleach, and supposing it was simply to be dis- 
solved in water I emptied two cans of lime into the 
bleach jar, threw in two or three pails of water, and 
as the clothes were all ready for it in the washer I 
introduced my bleach with a rush. 

"When the load was done, I asked the engineer to 
stand by a minute while I stepped across the street 
to get a sandwich. 

" 'The boss is here,' said he, 'so you don't want to 
fool around very long.' That made me hurry back, 
and when I got into the washroom there was the 
greatest excitement you ever saw in a laundry. They 
had just begun to take out the load, and the engin- 
eer was holding up a shirt in one hand and a pil- 
low case in the other, and that shirt and that 
pillow case looked as though they had been used 
as targets in a three days' Schutzenfest. That in- 
fernal lime had eaten holes in them till they looked 
like fly screens. It had eaten up every last piece 
in those washers except a pair of celluloid cuffs and 
a chamois skin chest protector that had got in by 
mistake. 



Second Suds Sayings 83 

" 'You've ruined the whole establishment!' bawled 
the engineer. 

"I thought the girls would lynch me then and 
there. If I had had a gun I never would have 
stood for it, not a minute, and that is the honest 
truth. I would have suicided then and there. 

"Of course, bad news travels fast. While I was 
seated there on a laundry truck, holding my head 
in my hand and cursing my fate, in walked the 
boss. The first thing I heard was a woman burst- 
ing into tears. I looked up, and there, wringing her 
hands, as the girls held the ruined garments up for 
inspection, stood Mrs. Kittie Rogers. 

"I started to my feet and staggered to the nearest 
washer. At the same time she saw me and 
screamed : 

" 'Joe Sheridan,' she exclaimed. 'Is it you ?' 
"I could not have said a word for ten thousand 
dollars. She called me into the office. I told my 
story; she told hers. 

"Her husband, Bob, had left five thousand dol- 
lars life insurance that she did not know any- 
thing about until after I had gone into the moun- 
tains, and having to earn her own living she bought 
that little laundry and was doing fine till I came 
along and ruined her with that one day's work. 
She knew better than I did what would have hap- 
pened if I could have borrowed a gun or got with- 
in reach of a river that day — it would have been 
all off. But she held me back and told me not to 
mind it ; she said she still had eight hundred dollars 
of the insurance money in the bank and that would 



84 Second Suds Sayings 

cover the loss ; and that now that I had got started 
there I must not desert her because I had always 
been so true to Bob — and that really he owed me 
so much when he died that most of the insurance 
money belonged to me anyway. 

"Then she told me that she had just been up to 
Cripple Creek for four days searching the town for 
me, because she heard that I was up there in the 
hospital. 

"Well, we never said one word around the laun- 
dry about that. They thought I had Kittie hypno- 
tized. But I stayed in that washroom until I could 
wash clothes. 

"Now, that is why I broke in when you fellows 
said that oxalic acid should be used for bleaching. 
I said it was all right if properly used. 

"Kittie and I ran that laundry a year and a half 
and we made money, till one day word same doAvn 
from the, Mountain Park country that some of the 
claims poor Bob Rogers had located there and I 
had grub-staked him for, were showing quartz. I 
went up there and brought some of the stuff back 
to Denver with me. It was rotten with gold. 

"Well, I am just back from New York, where 1 
sold a one-quarter interest in the claims for sixty 
thousand dollars in cash, and half of it goes to 
Kittie. It would all go to her if she'd take it. But 
she has promised to marry me and says I will need 
something to keep house on. 

"The affair will come off next week in Denver. If 
any of you gentlemen can arrange to be there it 
will not cost you a cent for transportation or hotel 



Second Suds Sayings 85 

bills, I'll promise you that. We have given the 
laundry to the engineer that helped me out, but he 
doesn't get possession till next Tuesday, for the 
girls have been decorating the place up for the last 
two weeks, but the ceremony is not going to take 
place in the washroom, but at our cozy little home 
in the suburbs. 

"Waiter, duplicate that last order of Moet & 
Chandon, and have another bottle on the ice." 



AND THE WOMAN? 



By Kirke La Shelle. 



I first met him in the private "den" of the manager 
of one of the local theatres, a cozy little nook where 
few choice spirits — newspaper men, theatrical celeb- 
rities, and 'round-town people — were wont to gather 
and entertain each other with spicy anecdotes and 
harmless fiction. The talk was always witty, often 
racy, and never dull. The "den" was down a flight of 
stairs from the theatre lobby, along a passage and 
round a corner, and when the door was closed the 
boredom of the villain's deepest buzz-saw tones, as 
well as the suffering heroine's shrillest cries, were 
securely shut out. Only the occasional bursts of ap- 
plause penerated to that happy spot like the rumble 
of distant thunder. It was here, among the clever 
fellows I knew so well, that I first rnet him, and I 
remember perfectly the impression made upon me by 
one article of his wearing apparel — his collar. I had 
been out of town on a two-months vacation, and on 
returning to my post as a dramatic writer on one 
of the daily papers found the theatrical season — it 
was the middle of September — well under way. One 
of the first places I visited was the "den." I pushed 
open the door without knocking, and as I entered the 
room was greeted with a chorus of "Helios" from 



Second Suds Sayings 87 

half a dozen of the old guard, whom I made out, 
through the smoke, comfortably disposed/ about the 
apartment. The manager was back-tilted in his re- 
volving chair, with his feet on the desk. Those in the 
other chairs had their feet up somewhere, too, and on 
the leather-covered sofa sat a stranger. 

When the greetings had worn themselves out and 
I had assured them all, in answer to inquiries, that I 
considered San Francisco the hotbed of feminine beau- 
ty, and I feebly described the "charming young per- 
sons" of that fog-fed town as I had found them, they 
laughed at my susceptibility, and the manager sud- 
denly remembered that I had never met the stranger, 
and introduced me. 

"Ned Gaylor, who has become one of us," wjas the 
presentation which the stranger had, and I took his 
hand with a cordial grip. When he resumed his seat, 
I took a good look at him, though in a casual way. He 
was very dark, resembling neither an Italian nor a 
Spaniard, but a mingling of both. His hair was black 
and bushy, and overhung his broad, pale forehead in a 
mass; his eyes were a soft brown and tender in ex- 
pression, and his moustache was a pronounced gray, 
quite in contrast with his hair. His attire was worn 
and shabby, but his collar — that caught my attention 
at the first glance. Surely he had worn it a week. It 
was strikingly grimy with the black which flies so free- 
ly in the Chicago atmosphere, and which makes a 
change of linen necessary in midday. But in spite of 
his accouterment, which was in violent contrast with 
his surroundings, Gaylor was evidently a gentleman. 
I saw that at once, and before I had been in his com- 



88 Second Suds Sayings 

pany ten minutes I had learned why he had "become 
one of us." His wit was something wonderful. It 
never seemed to lag, and while he talked the company, 
myself included, was mostly on a roar. And yet he 
never seemed to be obtruding his talents or monopoliz- 
ing his talents or monopolizing the conversation. He 
knew everybody of note in the theatrical or literary 
world, and rattled off interesting little stories about 
celebrities which were always new and generally a bit 
"Frenchy," though never coarse. 

"Speaking of 'Frisco," he said, turning to me, after 
a bit, "reminds me of Jack Ashley whom I knew there 
a long time ago. Jack was a good-looking fellow and 
an athlete, with a sort of rhythmic swing about him 
which -suggested force, and which made him a favorite 
with women. He was burdened with only time and 
money, and as he prowled about San Francisco — we 
were both seeing the country then — he began a flirta- 
tion that did for him effectually. It was a common 
matinee affair, but it was with a woman to make an 
artist or a poet wild with admiration. She was the 
queenliest beauty I ever saw, and Jack — well, he raved 
over her. The intrigue which followed was of her 
own making, but Jack was very like Barkis. One 
thing worried Jack, though. He never could induce 
her to give him any clew to her identity. This preyed 
on him, for he feared that she would one day disap- 
pear and leave no trace of her whereabouts. He was 
too honorable to follow her, however, or in any way 
spy upon her, and she knew this. I saw them to- 
gether one day ; they were leaving a French restaurant 
on Bush street, and as they entered a carriage I 



Second Suds Sayings 89 

chanced along. Jack didn't see me, but I saw the 
woman, and for a moment I envied Jack with all my 
heart and soul. She was one of those lithe-bodied 
blondes that take your heart from your bosom at a 
clutch; whose red-brown eyes are magnets to draw 
you as surely as the loadstone draws the needle; and 
whose step and carriage were the suggestion of pas- 
sionate physical poesy. That was the last time that 
Jack ever saw her. He came to the hotel that night 
broken-hearted. She had told him that she was go- 
ing away and that they would never meet again. Noth- 
ing could comfort Jack, and for weeks he moped 
about the streets, looking into the faces of the prome- 
naders and seeing none of the dazzling smiles that 
were frequently flashed on him. He was looking for 
one face which he never found. At the end of a 
month he concluded that she had really left town, and 
immediately conceived the notion of locating her. He 
visited all the surrounding bay towns, all the coast 
resorts, and poked around for weeks in Los Angeles. 

"The queer thing about this search was Jack's idea 
that the object of his quest was still on the coast, and 
his spasmodic belief that just at that time she was at 
Monterey. He might be in Sacramento, or away up 
the valley, or in Oakland, or 'Frisco, or at Los Ang- 
eles; but every little while he would take the notion 
that she was at Monterey right then, and the fastest 
first train was too slow in getting him there. After 
a few days' search at Monterey he would conclude that 
she had gone before he had arrived — maybe passed 
him on the way, bound for the place from which he 
had just come. Then he would make a mad rush to 



90 Second Suds Sayings 

get back, and would go on searching from town to 
town. His imagination became very fantastic. It pic- 
tured how he had missed her here and there, and filled 
his mind with visions of himself entering at one depot 
door while she left by another; of her on one ferry- 
boat going to Oakland and himself on one returning 
therefrom; and all such tricks. He never got on a 
boat but he looked it over high and low for her; he 
never boarded a train but he looked it through from 
the baggage car to the last sleeper, searching for her. 
In fact, he devoted his life to search for this woman 
who had been his companion in pleasure; v/ho had in 
no way earned his respect, but who had, because of 
her beauty and the mystery she had made of herself, 
compelled his love. And he did love her! I think if 
ever a man had a passion for a woman — a passion that 
literally consumed him and for whom he would glad- 
ly have sacrificed himself, that man was Jack Ashley. 

"Indeed, he did sacrifice himself in a way. Jack. 
was the younger son of a wealthy and aristocratic 
English family, and was traveling on an allowance, 
supposedly brushing up against the world and acquir- 
ing a store of wisdom. When he had prowled up and 
down the Pacific coast for the best part of two years 
looking for his lost beauty, his father summoned him 
to come home. By one pretext and another Jack man- 
aged to keep in the old gentleman's good books for 
about six months more, which time he spent in a chase 
about the country in quest of that woman that was 
desperate and — to me — pitiable. But at the end of 
this time the old gentleman peremptorily ordered Jack 
home, and sent him his last remittance. Of course. 



Second Suds Sayings 91 

he didn't go^except up and down the coast — and the 
old gentleman disowned and disinherited him, and cut 
off his income. Jack's mother, who was Spanish, idol- 
ized him, and supplied him with money for a time sur- 
reptitiously ; but Jack's father speedily prevented this, 
and then Jack was left to make his own way in the 
'golden west.' The trouble was, however, that he had 
no mind for doing anything of the sort. He had gone 
mad about this woman, whom he knew only as 'Stella' 
— a name she had given him — and he could think of 
nothing else. To bring his mind down to practical 
bread-winning, and to apply himself to some money- 
getting task, was an utter impossibility — as imprac- 
ticable as an effort to utilize the light of the moon in 
illuminating a parlor. 

"What he did was to stay at his 'Frisco hotel as long 
as they would keep him without a settlement. This 
was a good while, for he was well known as a man 
who paid his bills. But it came to an end one day, 
and he had to move. Then he went to Oakland, re- 
peating the experience ; to Sacramento ; to Los An- 
geles; to Monterey; to San Jose; in fact to all the, 
places where he had been in quest for the lost beauty. 
Finally he wore this credit and his wardrobe to tat- 
ters, and was absolutely at the end of his resources. 
Then he began to write for the 'Frisco papers. He 
was full of wit and wrote cleverly, and eked out a sort 
of cheap living — when he would work. But he chose 
mostly to roam about the streets and haunt the theatres 
in the forlorn hope that he would chance upon the 
woman who had disappeared. He was offered posi- 
tions upon the press, but as they entailed close ap- 



92 Second Suds Sayings 

plication and attention to business, he declined. 
Through all this I had been his confidant — the only 
one he had, he said. He had always held the belief 
that one day he would meet this woman; he had de- 
clared to me a thousand times that he felt, he knew, 
they would meet again ; but now he lost this hope and 
entertained the thought that she was dead. This soon 
grew to a conviction, and seemed at times to have had 
the effect of lifting him out of his absorbing passion. 
But one night, as I got off the ferry coming from 
Oakland, I found Jack at the slip, leaning over the rail 
and looking into the dark waters of the bay as they 
glimmered in the lamplight. I spoke to him, and he 
looked around savagely; then he smiled, in a ghastly 
way, and said I had startled him. As we walked up 
Market street I saw that he looked like a man who had 
been sick for weeks. 

" 'Nothing at all,' he said with a laugh, when I asked 
him what was the matter. And then he brightened up 
and was almost his own old happy self. But it was 
all forced; his ability to appear gay and be compan- 
ionable when he felt like jumping into the bay was 
one of the strangest phases of his peculiar character. 
I had seen this faculty exercised before and this time 
it didn't deceive me any. 

"I did some moralizing on his case when I left him 
that night, the sum and substance of which was that 
a lovely woman was as often a curse as a blessing, and 
that when she was a curse she was an offset to three 
or four of herself as blessings, which was putting it 
pretty strong, but the conclusion was justified, I think, 



Second Suds Sayings 93 

by Jack Ashley's case, for he never got over that 
'Stella' madness. 

"What do you say, gentlemen? Is not a man who 
develops such a love for such a woman deserving the 
scorn and ridicule of all men of character and mental 
balance ?" 

The comments were numerous and mostly denuncia- 
tory. I believe I was the only one who thought Ash- 
ley deserving of pity. I remember a grateful glance 
from Gaylor, as brief as a lightning flash, as I said 
that one couldn't tell at what time he would do some- 
thing as foolish and far reaching in its effect. 

"But what became of him, right or wrong, fool or 
unfortunate ?" asked one of the party. 

"He took poison one night and was found dead the 
next day." 

At this the denunciation was emphasized, and the 
mildest form of verdict was that Ashley was a fool 
who ought to have been drowned in infancy to save 
trouble. 

"And what do you think?" asked Gaylor turning 
to me with a peculiar smile. I had not given an 
opinion. 

"I think," I said, "that no man is qualified to judge 
another in matters of that sort." 

There was a jangle of ridicule and laughter at this, 
and, the performance being at an end, we hurried out 
before the lights were extinguished. 

"Which way?" asked Gaylor of me as we stood in 
front of the theatre together, the others having gone 
their convivial ways. 

"South," I said. 



94 Second Suds Sayings 

"I'll walk as far as the Palmer House with you," he 
replied. 

I thought there wasn't much in common between his 
make-up and the Palmer, but I could detect no trace 
of irony in his tone, so we started. 

I made a few common-place remarks as we walked, 
but Gaylor scarcely replied, and the short distance 
was traversed in comparative silence. When we 
reached the Palmer House corner he stopped and so 
did I. 

"I hope to see you often," he said, "and to know 
you better. I like you. Good-night," and he was gone. 

But he did not enter the Palmer House. I was so 
much interested in him that I stood looking after him 
as he walked away, and saw him pass the entrance, 
walk to the next corner and cross west. 

He impressed me so strongly that I called on the 
manager the next day and asked him what he knew 
of this strange person. 

"No more than you," he said, "it is only four or 
five weeks since he became known in Bohemia ; but he 
charmed everybody at once and in an increditably 
short space of time was a favorite. Now it seems as 
though we had known him for years. I don't know 
a readier or brighter fellow or one who is better com- 
pany. But that Ashley story dampened him last 
night. I never saw him like that before. However, it 
was natural ; he was the man's friend and was with 
him a long time. 

"What does Gaylor do?" I asked. 

"Nobody knows — nothing I guess," said the mana- 
ger with a smile. "You see he isn't very prosperous in 



Second Suds Sayings 95 

appearance. At first he was presentable enough, but 
just now he seems to be in straits. Did you see his 
linen?" 

"His collar, yes. I didn't see any cuffs." 

"Nor I. But he's not the kind of man to whom you 
could offer a dollar, with the suggestion that he ap- 
peared to need it. I would as soon think of offering Old 
Hutch the price of a drink. Gaylor's proud as a prince, 
and even though he must know of his shabbiness, 
holds himself among us as the best. I think he would 
resent anything like an effort to relieve his needs. He 
doesn't seem to want his distress recognized. I am 
glad to say, though, that there isn't one of the boys 
who wouldn't help him if they thought he would stand 
it. It's wonderful the hold he has taken on their 
• fancy." 

"Did he ever say what he did in 'Frisco?" I asked. 

"No, why?" 

"Perhaps he was a writer himself," I repHed. "In 
that case I think I can get him some work to do." 

I met Gaylor often in the weeks that followed. A 
few days after my first meeting with him he appeared 
to much better advantage, having secured clean linen; 
his clothing too, was brushed up and made to look con- 
siderably better. One day I found an opportunity and 
asked him if he had ever done any writing for the 
press. He glance^ at me sharply, and then, after a 
pause, said he had. I suggested that if he cared to 
occupy himself with some "special work" I could se- 
cure it for him, I thought. I could see he appreciated 
the delicacy of the way I put it. He thanked me, and 
said he would be pleased to do it "to kill time." 



96 Second Sxjds Sayings 

When he drew his first money for this work he took 
my hand and looked at me in a way that confessed his 
gratitude and confided in me his story of privation and 
hardship, though he didn't say a word. I looked him 
full in the face and we understood each other. 

The work he did speedily attained celebrity among 
the few newspaper men who, of all the reading public, 
know or care to know who the bright local writers 
are ; and after a time he was offered a staff position. I 
happened to be present when the tender was made, and 
he turned to me with an expression of countenance 
which reminded me of the time when he told the story 
of Ashley. But he declined the post, saying he was an 
erratic worker and didn't like the idea of being re- 
sponsible for a certain amount ©f writing each day. 
So he continued to do "special" work. He chummed, 
with the crowd as usual, and was as entertaining as 
ever. But often, when I would come in among them 
all at their merry-making, Gaylor would become less 
vivacious and gradually drift into a quieter vein ; I 
think he felt that I knew that he had little heart in his 
witticisms. 

And so December came along and the Christmas 
season approached. Whether something in the time 
itself recalled bitter memories, or whether he had only 
worn out the fit of industry that had come to him I 
don't know ; but for a week or two he did no work and 
did not appear in his usual haunts. A few days be- 
fore Christmas he came to see me. He looked as 
though the fever had been with him. I asked him if 
he had been sick. 

"No," he said, "only lazy," and laughed. 



Second Suds Sayings 97 

I suggested that he write a "special" for Christmas. 
He laughed again. 

"One of the peace-on-earth-good-will-to-men kind, 
with full stomachs and saintliness in it?" he asked. 

"Whatever you like, so it's a Christmas story," I 
said. 

"I guess I will fix up something," he said, "we must 
preserve the blessed spirit, of course." But he lin- 
gered. 

"You haven't done anything for a couple of weeks," 
I said ; "you might want to make some little presents," 
and I pressed a bill into his hand. I don't believe 
he would have allowed any other man to do that ; but 
he only looked at me with that significant glance, and 
went away. 

The next afternoon a reporter for an evening paper 
broke in upon me with a rush characteristic of eve- 
ning newspaper folk. He was as precipitate in his man- 
ner as in his language. 

"Have you seen the noon edition? Well, Gaylor 
has committed suicide, and his name isn't Gaylor at 
all ; it's Ashley." 

If a thunderbolt had struck the building I could not 
have been more startled. He laid a paper before me 
containing a brief account of the tragedy under black 
headlines. 

"Where is he?" I demanded. 

"At the morgue — say," as I seized my hat and coat, 
"if you turn up any inside facts, give 'em to me first, 
will you. You knew him better than anybody, and 
perhaps there's something good in the case that you will 
learn— will you?" 



98 Second Suds Sayings 

The last part of this was shouted at me as the ele- 
vator door clanged to and I dropped toward the ground 
floor. I jumped into a cab and rattled away toward 
the morgue — that clearing house for wasted lives and 
broken hearts, where Despair's books are ever being 
balanced and the accounts of existence closed. I was 
so lost in gloomy thoughts that before I knew it I 
was at the morgue. My cab cut in by a quick turn 
in front of a carriage which was passing and the 
driver thereof hurled a muffled threat at my man for 
the impertinence, since the cab brushed the noses of 
the carriage horses and made them shy. Exchanges 
of this nature between cab drivers are so common that 
I paid no more than passing attention, and leaping 
from the cab hastily entered the place. 

I was known there and was shown at once to the 
slab upon which poor Ashley lay. His face, though 
marked with the subtle stamp of death, was scarcely 
more pallid than when I had seen him last, and it 
had a look of indescribable serenity which I had never 
seen there before. It seemed to say that his last breath 
had been a sigh of such relief as no words, and only 
such a radiant countenance, could express. The dark 
mass of hair fell across the blue- white forhead in con- 
fusion. The composure of the face was perfect, and 
many of the lines of care which had marked it in life 
were gone. The inquest had not been held, and the 
body was dressed as it has been found lying across 
the bed in the poor room where he had lived, I noticed 
that the collar was missing, and turned to ask the 
attendant a question when I saw a lady approach. She 
was rather taller than the average, and lithe and grace- 



Second Suds Sayings 99 

ful in form. I could see through her veil that she was 
a blonde and very beautiful. 

The attendant brought her to my side, and pointing 
to the body on the slab said : 

"This is him, ma'am." 

The veiled lady bent over the happy, lifeless face, 
and it seemed to smile back at her as if conscious of 
her presence and rejoicing thereat. She did not speak, 
but vi^ith the gloved hand she pushed the mass of hair 
back from the forehead w^ith a caressing touch. 

"Did you know him, madam?" I asked. 

She gave me a quick glance and said : 

"Are you a reporter?" 

"No, I was his friend, though our acquaintance 
was only a few months old." 

She seemed relieved at this and said : 

"I knew him years ago — in San Francisco." 

" 'Stella !' I exclaimed involuntarily. 

The veiled lady started, but immediately recovered 
herself. After a moment she turned and looked at 
me steadily. 

"The man is dead," she said in a low tone, "so is the 
past." 

She gave the rumpled hair one more caress, looked 
for a moment into the tranquil face, and quietly left- 
the place of death. I heard a carriage door close and 
the sound of wheels. My driver, who had grown cold 
from waiting outside, came in. I called him. 

"Do you know whose carriage that was that just 
drove away?" 

"It's a public hack," he said. "I always have a row 
with the driver whenever we happen in the same block. 
Did you want to know who the lady was ?" 



100 Second Suds Sayings 

I told him I did. 

"I'll find out for you," he said, 

I turned to the attendant and asked the question 
which I had been about to ask when the lady entered. 

"Was anything found — any letters or writing?" 

"Nothing but his collar," was the reply. "He wrote 
his name on that, and it was found in his hand. Here 
it is." 

Diagonally across this collar, which looked very 
much as did the one which he wore when first I saw 
him, was written : 

"Jack Ashley, London, England; known as Ned 
Gaylor of San Francisco." 

It had been written with a lead pencil just before 
his death. I turned the collar over mechanically and 
glanced at the other side. Three words, nearly ob- 
literated by some grimy finger, caught my eye. They 
were written in very small letters across one end of 
the collar. They were a message to me. Feeling sure 
that I would know of his death at once, and look for 
some letter or dying word, he had written them where 
they would not be seen by the casual investigator, but 
where he felt I would find them. They were: 

"Write my story." 

And here it is. 

[N. B. — I learned, subsequently, from the cab driv- 
er that the woman was the young wife of a Chicago 
laundryowner. Wherefore I send this narrative to you, 
as altogether appropriate, and more likely than in the 
daily press to meet the eye of Stella, whose fatal 
beauty was the rock upon which poor Jack Ashley's 
life bark foundered and went down. — K. L.] 



DOWN IN OLD MEXICO. 



By A. K. Potter. 



A. 'land of lutes and witching tones, 
Of silver, onyx, opal stones, 
A lazy land, wherein all seems 
Enchanted into endless dreams. 
And never any need they know. 
In Mexico. 

In my last letter, when I wrote about Mexico, I neg- 
lected to tell you that in the City of Mexico is one of 
the oldest laundries, one that will compare in years, as 
well as with modern equipment, to any in the States. 

This plant was opened about 20 years ago to give 
clean linen to the Pullman Company, as well as the 
very few American residents of the capital city. At 
that time a stock company was formed among a half 
a dozen or so Americans, whose knowledge of the 
laundry business consisted mainly in the fact that they 
knew what a starched shirt and collar was, and that 
back in their native land it was possible to have them 
washed several times before they were worn out. Each 
good American subscribed for all the stock he thought 
he could stand and one of the stockholders in this New 
Eldorado was sent to the States to buy machinery. He 
arrived in New York City; was shown around by an 
enterprising and enthusiastic drummer; who knew 
about as much as the prospective customer as to what 



102 Second Suds Sayings 

was actually needed in starting a new laundry in Mex- 
ico. However, he hypnotized him, found out how 
much his New York draft called for, and fitted him 
up accordingly. His draft just bought one steam 
flat work ironer, guaranteed to iron once through ; one 
medium sized washer, also one 20-inch extractor. This 
was the original outfit, but the man from Mexico re- 
turned home quite happy, and the machinery followed 
upon the next steamer. 

When the "outfit" arrived in Mexico they proceeded 
to set it up, and as none of them had any experience, 
some of the pipes were as large as one inch, most of 
them less in size. Ironing boards were installed, help 
hired and the trouble started. 

Well, Dowst, there may be, and probably are, lots of 
things and different kinds of business that will succeed 
without a knowledge of the same, but these people 
found out after a few months' trial that a laundry was 
not one of them. Some of the stockholders gave their 
stock away; some shook dice, and some sold, taking a 
fifty years' note without interest; still others, when 
asked to represent or come up with the 25 per cent as- 
sessment, denied ever being stockholders in the con- 
cern, all the stock at last falling to two men, who never 
would think otherwise excepting that there was a 
grand opening for a laundry in Mexico City. But 
say, Dowst, when you are lighting the fire under the 
boiler with wood that cost you six cents a stick, to 
burn coal that costs $22 a ton, and competing with 
washerwomen who can and do live on ten cents a day 
or less, American money, you are not setting by your 
"bright fireside" reading the Ladies' Home Journal and 



Second Suds Sayings 108 

smoking 40-cent cigars. You are more apt to be 
holding your think-cap, and if able to think at all, 
wondering if Dante really had a dream, or if he had 
been up against it like yourself. 

However, they concluded that, while they did not 
know anything about the laundry business, it was es- 
sential that they get someone who did, for up to this 
time all they had learned was to dig up dollars, which, 
at that time, to both of the remaining owners were 
somewhat larger than "New England dinner plates;" 
so they got in correspondence with the firm that sold 
them the machinery and it was finally arranged that 
Geo. Perry, of Richmond, Va., who recently died, was 
to go and take charge of the plant. George had been 
with Mr. Sheperdson of the New York Laundry in 
Richmond for some time, and was more or less posted. 

While waiting for George to arrive, there drifted 
into Mexico City a genuine American "pan handler," 
who would have sworn he was capable of editing a 
newspaper, running a bank or a locomotive or filling 
any other position that looked like a square meal, and 
a "doby dollar." A doby dollar, Dowst, is the name 
they used to have for a Mexican silver dollar, because 
they could be bought so cheap. Doby is the name of 
the unbaked bricks, mud bricks, that they use in 
building their houses in that country. They are four- 
teen inches long, eight inches wide and four inches 
thick, and at one time it was a question which had the 
most value, a doby or a dollar. Anyway, this "pan- 
handler," or, as they are more commonly* called.^ 
"tramp," convinced the pwners that he was the "origi- 
nal originator" of "steam laundries," and all he asked 



104 Second Suds Sayings 

was a sixteenth part of an opportunity in order to 
demonstrate to them that they had something that 
would make Aladdin's Lamp story look like 30 pennies. 
They had their misgivings about the matter, but con- 
cluded that they had been members of the "In Bad 
Club" so long that really they were not taking a very 
long risk to let him try it. So they took "Wandering 
Willie," got him a square or round meal, and gave him 
the price of a night's lodging and his breakfast, and 
they all met the next morning at the laundry. Mr. 
Tramp walked through the plant, made many wise 
remarks and sagelike suggestions, and finally said: 
"Well, let's get busy." They got out enough shirts, 
collars and cuffs for a washer load and he started it and 
let it run for about an hour ; then he said : "Tell me, 
where will I find the lime?" They got out for him a 
ten-pound can of Greenbank, and he said: "A large 
pail, please." They got him the pail and he poured 
the ten pounds of lime into the pail, dissolving it as 
best he could, all of the ten pounds in the one pail. 
One of the owners spoke up and said : "Ain't that 
just a trifle strong?" With a majestic look and a 
Francis Wilson or De Wolf Hopper wave of the arm, 
he replied, "Just you watch me." They did, and saw 
the whole ten pounds poured into a sixty-shirt washer, 
and badly dissolved at that. Steam for half an hour 
and plenty of it; afterwards, of course, a couple of 
rinses. Well, Dowst, of course you will have to im- 
agine some of the results, but the owners told me that 
it was as fine a lot of white strings and rags as they 
ever expected to see, that came out of that washer. 

No, Dowst, the man was not retained, and I do not 
remember their telling me that they even stood for any 



Second Suds Sayings 105 

more meal tickets, and as far as they were concerned, 
without doubt, the man could have slept in any one of 
the city parks, or yet at the bottom of the lake near by. 
Now you would reasonably suppose that after many 
"swipes" of this sort — and this was only one of many 
that they received — that they would have been glad to 
have let the public return to the washer-woman, her 
rock pile and mud puddle. But they didn't ; they still 
had that hope which springs eternal in the human 
breast within them. When Perry arrived he, of course, 
knew no Spanish, and the owners having other busi- 
ness, could not stay in the laundry with him all the 
time, so George did not have a bed of roses by any 
means, for there is no race of people I have ever met, 
read or have heard about, who can steal time, or any- 
thing they can carry off, like the peon class of Mexico. 
I saw a peon helper for a stone mason hide behind a 
post for thirty minutes by the watch, and have a load 
of stone weighing from 200 to 250 pounds on his back, 
and him thinking all the time he was loafing! There 
is nothing that they will not take if they can get away 
with it undetected, and no matter how trifling a thing 
they steal, they can sell it. They have in Mexico City 
a "thieves' market" visited by every tourist that goes 
there, where they sell the things they carry off. It is 
possible to buy anything from a blacksmith's anvil to a 
lady's hairpin. If they haven't got what you want, 
and you will wait, they will go, or send out, and steal 
it for you! While wages were very low the showing 
made did not appear to justify the purchasing of more 
machinery or equipment, and some months the plant 
lost less than others. Then they patted themselves on 
the back and called it a profit, for it was that much 



106 Second Suds Sayings 

less to dig up, and from one point of view was a good 
gain ; but at last came a time when they were not in a 
position to pay more rent. One of the owners con- 
ceived the brilliant idea of giving his notes for a piece 
of property and moving the laundry. Instead of pay- 
ing rent he only paid interest. This was a good sav- 
ing, but it dragged along in this manner for a good 
number of years, and at last the Pullman work in- 
creased, the bundle work increased, and it was neces- 
sary to put in more washers. This was done, and still 
no profit ; then they were talked into buying more than 
$10,000 worth of machinery at one time, repair and put 
into good condition their building, and when this was 
done the stock was increased to $50,000, but still all 
owned by two men. Eighteen months after making 
these improvements the plant paid them a dividend of 
over 50 per cent on the $50,000. 

They have added more machinery, have a laundry 
building that is worth, without the ground, $25,000, 
and it is doubtful if today in the United States there is 
a laundry earning more morey on its capital than this 
same old laundry. 

During the annual flower show or "Battle of Flow- 
ers" held in Mexico City this spring, the most origi- 
nal and one of the most attractive floats shown was 
one put out by this laundry. It was a large four-horse 
truck, fitted up with laundry machinery, the same being 
operated with small motors, run from a storage bat- 
tery, the girls (native) turning out laundry work dur- 
ing the entire time of the parade. It is needless to 
state they received one of the principal prizes for the 
exhibit, as well as a whole lot of good advertising. 



Second Suds Sayings 107 

But the strange part of it is this, Dowst. I have 
talked with a number of the original stockholders, 
who burnt or gave away their stock and left it for 
others to make a failure or a success, and they, with- 
out exception, are under the opinion and belief that 
they were buncoed, and that otherwise they would be 
drawing a good income today. There are few men 
who would stick to a proposition of this kind, through 
thick and thin, and it must be highly gratifying to look 
back over the many years of hard work and struggles, 
and say, 'For twenty years I was the only man in 
Mexico who thought there was a future for the steam 
laundry, and had the nerve and will power to make 
my thoughts 'win out.' " 



THE MARKER'S STORY. 



By Charles Dowst. 



"What is new over at the laundry?" inquired Mrs. 
Edwards of her daughter Ellen, head marker at the 
City Steam Laundry, who had just returned from 
work. 

"Nothing new except that D-46 is married and once 
more among the prosperous," replied the daughter, 
"and, oh, I am so glad !" 

"Come, now, explain what you mean by D-46, and 
why are you glad?" said the mother. 

"Well," Ellen replied, "when Liirst went to work at 
the City Laundry as assistant marker in the shirt and 
collar department, I noticed, each week, a package of 
extra-fine shirts marked D-46, made to order by a 
leading haberdasher. They were made of the finest 
quality of goods, open front and back, with cuffs at- 
tached and the owner's monogram worked in blue 
silk on the right sleeve. 

"Each week this bundle contained from seven to 
ten shirts, with collars in proportion, so to satisfy my 
curiosity I looked up the deliveryman's number on 
the list. He was Jimmie Edwards, who has that 
dandy route on the boulevard, and I asked him who 
D-46 was. 

"Jimmie smiled when I put the question up to him, 



Second Suds Sayings 109 

and said, 'One of my best customers; he has bache- 
lor quarters in a high-toned flat building. I never 
have seen him, as I get the bundle from the janitor. 
I guess he pays monthly, as I never had a collect pack- 
age. Why do you want to know, Ellen?' 

" 'Nothing special, just curiosity,' I explained. 

"The usual large bundle came in every week for a 
long time, but after a while it commenced to diminish 
in size. Then I noticed that it was brought in by Ol- 
son, our Swede deliveryman, in place of Jimmie Ed- 
wards. I looked up the address and found that it was 
over in a cheap boarding-house district, on a side street. 

"The weekly bundle held now only a few shirts and 
collars. As the fine shirts were nearly worn out, I 
often took them to the repair woman on the upper 
floor, to have her stitch up a tear or mend a button- 
hole. After a few weeks I noticed some new ones 
in the D-46 bundle, but they were not from a fashion- 
able haberdasher, with a monogram on the sleeve, 
but of the ninety-eight-cent bargain-sale quality. Then 
I knew that our old customer was not prospering. 

"But one Tuesday, in came a good-sized bundle 
containing the finest of made-to-order linen, just as 
of old. Well, the D-46 bundle came regularly for 
quite a while. Several weeks ago, Jimmie Edwards 
said, 'Ellen, I guess I have lost my best customer; 
the flat is locked up and the janitor says he has gone 
away.' But today Jimmie came to my desk after 
turning in his second load, and smilingly said, 'Ellen, 
Mr. D. is home again, and I got a whole basketful of 
work from his flat. It will be up on the marking table 
soon, so look it over.' He sort of smiled when he 
said it. 



110 Second Suds Sayings 

"It was a big basketful when I came to it, and, Mam- 
ma, along with the usual lot of made-to-order shirts, 
was a bride's trousseau of linen, the most beautiful I 
ever have laid my eyes on ! 

"Well, being a woman, I was naturally curious. 
As a pretext, I went to the proprietor's office to have 
him order another lot of marking ink, and I asked 
him if he knew one of our customers, a Mr. D. who 
lived in a flat on the boulevard. He said: 

" 'Why, yes ; he is a young stock broker ; was 'bust- 
ed' and 'on his uppers' for several months, but made 
a fortune in 'war babies' on the exchange and was 
married a couple of months ago to the daughter of one 
of our prominent merchants. The daily papers gave 
the wedding a half-column send oflf. But why do you 
want to know?' 

" 'Woman's curiosity,' I replied ; 'but, Mamma, one 
can find romance even in marking soiled linen." 



EFFICIENCY— YOUR OWN. 



By Frank W. Porter. 



Webster's dictionary defines efficiency as "The act 
of producing effect ; a causing to be or to exist ; effec- 
tual agency. Power of producing the effect intended ; 
active competent power." 

But what is efficiency? Is it not the exercise of 
common sense, or judgment? Many employers are 
prone to rail about the inefficiency of their employees, 
when the inefficiency is in themselves. In fact, about 
ninety per cent of the inefficiency in the average laun- 
dry today is the result of poor judgment — lack of com- 
mon sense, or ignorance, whichever you may choose to 
call it — of the owner or manager. 

There should always be one head to any business — 
a la "commission government," if you please — with a 
head to each department, on down the line, responsible 
to the head of the concern. In other words, there 
should be a leader. 

A "leader" is defined as "A man fitted by force of 
ideas, character or genius, with ability to arouse, incite 
and direct men in conduct and achievement." This 
leader, or head man, should be one capable of perfect- 
ing or laying out an organization, for business direct- 
ing, with ability to bring about a systematic organiza- 
tion of the working forces, and also capable of super- 



112 Second Suds Sayings 

vising, and being able to inculcate in the minds of his 
subordinates or assistants the cardinal principles of 
service, which includes quality, both leading to success 
wherever practiced. Efficiency is the producing or 
bringing about of results satisfactory to the public ; in 
the delivery of quality and service, and to himself in 
the development of a profit which will compensate him 
for his efforts, and the result of the employer's com- 
pensation is in proportion to his own efficiency and 
ability. 

This efficiency in yourself consists of an ability to 
"size up the situation," whatever it may be, in your 
selection, by a knowledge of human nature, of em- 
ployees fitted to fill the positions you may want them 
for, acceptably; the ability to adjust these people to 
positions where they will produce the best results. If 
they fail in one place, this efficiency in yourself, or 
knowledge of the human family, will enable you to 
place them where they will be successful. You also 
should have enough knowledge of the people to enable 
you to handle their trade in a manner that will prove 
most satisfactory to the majority, and retain, their 
good will and patronage indefinitely. Shifting business 
is unprofitable. 

There is a compelling force about the individuality 
or personality of the efficient employer, a force which 
makes itself felt whether he be present or absent. The 
employees instinctively feel this power in their em- 
ployer. It is not bluster and bluiif; it is a quiet, but 
compelling force. It makes them know that this type 
of man knows good laundry work, and that he knows 
when a machine is operated properly. The efficient 



Second Suds Sayings 113 

employer knows what the percentage of cost should 
be in the fuel account; the labor, delivery, insurance, 
tax, license, washroom, soap, supply, paper, twine, 
depreciation percentages ; cost in the loss and damage 
department. In fact, he is efficient, and the 'employees, 
as I said before, know that the employer knows these 
things ; therefore, they watch their work more closely, 
knowing that a change from what the conditions should 
be will be noted by the employer. Consequently, it 
develops in them a higher degree of efficiency, by 
making them more careful in their work, and creates 
in them a desire to learn more and progress more rap- 
idly. They are more anxious to prove to the efficient 
employer that they are striving to be efficient them- 
selves; therefore, both the employer and employee 
profit. 

The public also comes under the spell of this power, 
and it attracts the better class of business, because the 
public also instinctively feels the efficient man's effi- 
ciency, and knows that he will give them the results 
they are seeking. 

The inefficient man is like the Reverend Bascom An- 
thony, a presiding elder of the Methodist church in 
southern Georgia, who tells a story of a Negro pastor 
down his way who failed to give satisfaction to his 
flock. A committee from the congregation waited on 
him to request his resignation. 

"Look here !" demanded the preacher. "Whut's de 
trouble wid mah preachin'? Don't I argufy?" 

"You sho does, eldah," agreed the spokesman. 

"Don't I sputify concernin' de Scriptures?" 

"You suttinly does," admitted the other. 

"Den, v/hat's wrong?" 



114 Second Suds Sayings 

"Well, eldah," stated the head of the committee, 
"hit's dis way : You argufies and you sputifies, but 
you don't show wherein." 

The efficient manager or owner of a laundry does 
not contract for a piece of work regardless of the cost, 
to keep his fellow tradesman from securing the trade. 
He knows the cost of such work, and allows the un- 
profitable volume to go to the other man. 

The efficient employer does not disregard the rights 
or welfare of his employees. He knows what their 
rights are, and conserves them. His business is con- 
ducted with as much honor and with as clean methods 
as it is possible to conduct it. He conceives of those 
who work for him, not as machines to make him great 
incomes on the lowest possible wages, but he conceives 
of them as human beings, doing the world's work, as he 
is, and who are his care. He conceives of business as 
a stewardship. He knows that the highest degree of 
efficiency cannot be obtained by working his employees 
eleven or twelve hours daily. He realizes that he is 
merely robbing them of their next day's strength and 
efficiency. 

The efficient employer provides clean, sanitary quar- 
ters to house his business and employees, knowing that 
light and fresh air assist materially in stimulating and 
developing the efficiency of his workers, and advertises 
himself as just and humane, with ideals above the 
mere accumulation of the paltry dollar, and a compre- 
hension of what is really justice to the working classes. 

The efficient employer in many localities proves an 
important factor toward the development of efficiency 
in his fellow tradesmen. His plant is always open to 



Second Suds Sayings 115 

his friends in the trade. If he has achieved a result 
which might temporarily give him an advantage over 
his fellow tradesmen in the production of his work, he 
makes this known to his friends in the trade. 

There are many old-fashioned, inefiticient, selfish, 
egotistical brethren doing business in the world today 
whose egotism and selfishness blind them to such an 
extent that they are going backward, instead of going 
forward, as they think they are. Have you ever met 
any of this type of man? They are old-fashioned be- 
cause they flock by themselves. 

They are selfish after a dog-in-the-manger fashion. 
They want it all themselves, and are jealous of and 
spiteful to their competitors when they show signs of 
success. They meet with their friends in the trade, 
maybe, and agree to certain reforms which will, if en- 
acted, prove of value to them, but they are so dishonest 
themselves that they impute ulterior motives to the 
inen who are trying to improve their conditions; or 
else they are such moral and selfish cowards they do 
not want to keep their agreements themselves, and 
secretly, as long as possible, violate their pledges, and 
another effort for reform falls by the wayside. 

The narrow-minded, selfish individuals do not pro- 
gress very rapidly; they are egotistical, and in their 
egotism believe that they know it all, and scoff at the 
modern laundryowner who has a cost system and uses 
improved and modern appliances; the man who has a 
free and open mind, who would live and let live, help 
and let help, and bring about success. Their egotism 
tells them they are achieving, but they are not. 

The successful man in the laundry business is the 



116 Second Suds Sayings 

efficient, open-minded, big-hearted, unselfish individ- 
ual who says, "Come on, boys, let's put the laundry 
business up to the front of the labor employing indus- 
tries, in efficiency, quality and service, and from a 
profit-making standpoint, both for the employee and 
for employer." We are developing this type of man 
yearly, and our associations are most potent factors 
toward this development; and the faster this type of 
man is produced the more pleasant, agreeable and prof- 
itable will the laundry business become. 



MAME'S "COUNT" EXPLAINS. 



By Isabella Oakes Shaw. 



Something was worrying Ellen O'Brien, "forelady" 
at the Great White Way Laundry — and Ellen wasn't 
the worrying, kind, either. She often used to say 
"What's the use of worryin' over things that most like- 
ly won't ever happen?" 

But somehow Ellen had contracted the worrying 
habit lately. Every day she came to the big plant with 
a big burden on her mind, and each day it seemed 
as if some little imp gave an additional flip to the 
burden just for good measure. She might go to the 
movies in the evening, or to mass on Sunday morning, 
but she carried the burden with her. And the brooding 
sorrow was not really Ellen's own — it was something 
worse. It was something that Ellen saw hovering 
over her boy, Tim. And it was all on account of an 
"Eyetalian" who called at the laundry office all too 
often. 

Now, once a week is often enough for any man to 
call about his laundry — anyone would know that. But 
this "Eyetalian" ! He called any time he happened to 
think about it, apparently. Sometimes — not often — he 
had with him a large, smiling, velvet-eyed lady for 
whom he tenderly opened the door very wide. - The 
lady was opulent, built on a large, broad scale, and 
the door had to be opened to the limit to admit her. 



118 Second Suds Sayings 

But I'm getting ahead of my story. You'll never in 
the world understand how Ellen O'Brien, after years 
of looking on the bright side of life, came to fall into 
a melancholy condition, unless we go way back to the 
time Timothy O'Brien, her youngest, was sent to 
Camp Upton. So just wait a moment while I whirl 
back the pages and we'll run through the chapters that 

have gone before. 

* * * 

If Ellen O'Brien's son Tim had not been sent to the 
training camp at Yaphank, it is quite likely she would 
never have given up her good job as "forelady" at the 
Great Middle West Laundry, in Chicago, for love or 
money. Ellen was not the rolling-stone type. Her 
husband had been that kind, and that is enough to 
make any woman steady-going herself. She had come 
to Chicago when she was a slip of a girl, a bride, and 
had grown up with the city — which at that time was 
rising from ashes and forging way ahead of some 
other cities that had never known such disaster. El- 
len's children had been born in Chicago, reared there 
and married there — all save Timothy. 

Her husband had died about ten years ago, but 
widows of men who have been rolling-stones, and 
lingerers at corner bars, usually have no time or money 
to sit at home nursing grief. The parlor carpet was 
not yet paid for, nor, for that matter, was the stove on 
which the daily food of the O'Briens was cooked. El- 
len O'Brien had to get a job. And one presented 
itself simultaneously with Ellen's need in this form : 

"Wanted: Forelady at the Great Middle West 
Laundry. A good, sensible woman, not too young, 
and not afraid of work." 



Second Suds Sayings 119 

The advertisement appeared one Saturday night. 

Ellen was on hand Monday morning. Big Bill Her- 
zog, the proprietor, saw at once that she would fill 
the bill. In these days, laundry proprietors did not 
expect to get experienced "foreladies." All they asked 
was good raw material capable of becomnig ex- 
perienced. 

Ellen was a plain-faced woman, with sandy hair, 
drawn back trimly from a high forehead. No soft 
fringe fell over Ellen's forehead to give depth and 
mystery to her eyes. It had been far more important 
in Ellen's case to take depth and mystery away from 
the eyes, and convince some grocer or butcher, grown 
tired of extending credit, that the bills would be paid 
if the owner of the eyes had to pawn her wedding ring ' 

The way a woman wears her hair is, to some ex- 
tent, the story of her life ! 

No one made any smart jokes about "fascinating 
widows" when Ellen began service at the laundry. 
Even "Hiney" Harris, head of the delivery department, 
who had a way with him that he calculated would 
subjugate any living woman, had to change his tactics 
when the new "forelady" came upon the scene. Ellen 
had an eye that could detect masculine maneuvers a 
mile off. The only reply she made to his first feeble, 
pallid joke about "getting some awfully nice girls in 
our laundry nowadays" was brief and to the point : 

"Say, Harris, ain't you got a job in your department 
fer my Tim? Not a job like yours — all talk and no 
hustle — but a man-size job. I'd hate to have him 
grow up to be the likes of you!" 

And Tim got a job — the best compliment "Hiney" 
Harris had ever paid a woman. 



120 Second Suds Sayings 

But in the course of time, Timothy O'Brien drifted 
to New York. Maybe he had just a drop of his fath- 
er's wanderlust in him — not enough to hurt — and the 
really good training that the really efficient "Hiney" 
had given him made good material for the Great White 
Way Laundry. Tim assumed charge of its delivery 
department. 

Tim had ambition in the educational line, and, among 
other studies at night school, he took up French, 

Tim's observation of business conditions had con- 
vinced him that a young man who perfected himself in 
some particular study that other young men neglected, 
but for which there was a real demand, was likely to 
rise very high in some business firm. He had heard 
that there would be a future with the laundry ma- 
chinery concerns, as well as with other manufacturers, 
for young men who could speak French fluently. 
France had been torn with war so long, her manu- 
factories destroyed, and it was but natural that there 
would be a tremendous demand for the output from 
other countries when hostilities should have ceased. 
Young men who could speak the language of the 
country would be worth twice as much as men who 
would have to trust to interpreters. 

But Ellen did not share his vision; and when she 
found him devoting so much time to the study of 
French she remarked, unsympathetically : 

"Studying French is it? Goodness knows what for!" 
although to the neighbors she said: 

"And now he's studying French and I dunno what !" 

"Well I'm thinking it'd fit him better if he'd set his 
mind on the typewritin' and stennygraffy," said Mary 



Second Suds Sayings 121 

O'Reilly, hand ironer. "What wud he be studyin' 
for?" 

"Why, so he can talk to French people, of course !" 
answered Ellen, with a toss of her head. She had 
frequently bewailed the fact that he was squandering 
his time in this way, but her bewailments were not for 
a moment to be shared by Mary O'Reilly, 

"And do you mean to tell me, Ellen O'Brien, that 
you hold for your boy Timothy spending his time 
learning a lot of jingo to talk to wops that he'll never 
meet in the wide world?" asked Mary O'Reilly. It 
certainly was clear enough that Ellen O'Brien was 
losing her mind. 

But the feeble-mindness of Ellen O'Brien and the 
impudence of Mary O'Reilly passed into history — as 
unpleasant things, the saints be praised, have a habit 
of doing — and then came Tim's adventure to New 
York, with busy days at the Great White Way Laun- 
dry, study at night school, a few golden minutes at 
a certain desk in the laundry, and — the war! 

"It's good Tim's strong on the French," casually 
remarked Ellen O'Brien to Mary O'Reilly as she 
folded her apron for the last time at the Great Middle 
West, preparatory to unfolding it "somewhere in New 
York." 

"But it's a fool you are, Ellen O'Brien," said Mary 
O'Reilly, with a view to chastening her spirits and 
pride, "to be giving up your good job and your good 
money to gallivant off to New York after Tim — not 
knowing whether or not you'll ever find a day's work 
to keep soul and body together wid." 

But the "forelady" of the Great Middle West had 



122 Second Suds Sayings 

for so many years placed perfect confidence in her 
own decisions that her preparations for following her 
soldier boy went on according to schedule. She'd see 
all she could of Tim before he was sent, equipped with 
his parley-voo, to far-ofif France. 

And a few days later Ellen O'Brien was filling the 
position of "forelady" at the Great White Way Laun- 
dry — the very place where Tim had been employed. 

The proprietor liked her looks. The departed "fore- 
lady" had had all the tricks of the "professional fore- 
lady" — a "Polyanna smile," a pushing forward of the 
"help" she liked, and a pushing back of the "help" she 
did not like. (Oh, not so you'd notice it particularly 
— but you know how it's done.) She had all manner 
of methods, tried by generations of "foreladies" since 
steam laundries first began to turn wheels. She had 
had ambitions to be "solid" with the boss. 

But the boss was a seasoned person, who knew "pro- 
fessional forelady" tricks as far ofif as he could see 
them. He could almost tell if there were a "profes- 
sional forelady" trick lurking in the next room, even 
when the door was shut. And he liked Ellen O'Brien 
with her directness of speech, which contained no 
latent desire to please except by ability, and her honest 
eyes, which held no lurking plans for a future "easy 
job." 

Ellen told of her years at Chicago's almost-biggest 
laundry and was hired on the spot. After that, Ellen 
saw Tim almost every week. Even at training camps 
an honest, pleasant way tells — and if a pass could be 
spared for Tim he got it as sure as the sun rose. 

Ellen didn't think much about overseas — she 



Second Suds Sayings 123 

wasn't paid to mope around thinking of her own 
troubles. If the President needed Tim in France, why 
he'd have to go ! And Tim could speak French ! My, 
but he was the far-sighted lad to be studying French 
among all his other studies all those months. He had 
even stayed at the French Branch of the Y, M. C. A. 
while directing the deliveries for the Great White Way 
Laundry. To think of the likes of him — a plain Irish- 
American boy — parley-vooing and going to France 
maybe! Ellen laughed as she directed the feeding of 
the big flat work ironers. 

And Mary O'Reilly could laugh on the wrong side 
of her mouth now ! 

If it wasn't for that "Eyetalian" ! 

But I'm getting ahead of my story again. 

* * * • 

The Great White Way Laundry occupied four 
floors, and had one hundred and fifty men and women 
on the pay-roll. Ellen found her days passing more 
rapidly than they had in Chicago, and, furthermore, 
she now filled two positions. I'll tell you how that 
happened : 

The proprietor, like more men than you'd ever be- 
lieve (unless you happen to have worked in some big 
hive of industry for years, where men show up as 
they really are), was an out-an-out Idealist. Set- 
tlement workers, missionaries, Y. M. C. A. members, 
club women and all sorts of women who look into 
the condition of the working woman are thoroughly 
familiar with the "pussy-footing" floor-walker who 
suavely leads the latest-arrived saleswoman out to 
supper after store hours — the bland gentlemen who 



124 Second Suds Sayings 

hire stenographers merely to tell them about how their 
wives don't understand them, and all the other types 
of "gentlemen" who go erringly on their way. But the 
man who has the higher interests of his employees at 
heart? Well, you have to convince some of those ex- 
perienced women who work. 

But Ellen O'Brien knew men better than that. No 
woman can work in a big laundry for ten or fifteen 
years without knowing the heights and depths of men. 
And when the big proprietor told Ellen that he not 
only wanted her to be a "forelady," but also a wise 
mother to the women in the place — why, she simply 
took him at his word. A lady "investigator" might 
think an idealistic manager too good to be true, but 
Ellen had worked among the plain American men, and 
knew there was likely to be more good than villainy 
among them. She followed the line of duty as marked 
out by the boss without looking for any ulterior motive. 

The Boss said : "Be a mother to the women, young 
and old, from office to marking room. I want them 
to live straight lives, and I want them to come to you 
and tell you when they have any troubles. I don't 
understand women, and I'm not going to try, but I 
want you to turn the trick for me. 1 try to do the 
best I can, but I don't have time to look into a whole 
lot of things that I suppose I ought to. I want you 
to do that for me. I suppose I might have one of 
those welfare workers here, but somehow I never 
could take to highbrow women going around doing 
my thinking for me. I never was the kind that could 
be led around by the nose. I'll do anything that I 
think is right, but I won't be driven to it!" 



Second Suds Sayings 125 

Men were classified in Ellen's mind as "the right 
sort" and as "the wrong sort." She had appraised the 
proprietor of the Great White Way as "the right sort" 
when she first met him, but now he was definitely 
placed. 

* * * 

"Well we never know what's going to happen to us 
before the year's out." Ellen O'Brien whisked a 
clean cloth over the sorting table as she gave forth 
this big, human statement in answer to a long story 
of harrowing happenings that Pearlie Harrigan, head 
marker and sorter, had been afflicting her with. 
Ellen had fully established herself as official mother 
to the female employees of the Great White Way 
Laundry, 

It was a bit tiresome sometimes. You and I both 
know that there are certain people to whom we 
scarcely dare say "How do you do," for fear of a 
long-drawn-out account of troubles that seem to grow 
rather than diminish in the telling. Such people love 
to tell the stories of their lives, and Pearlie Harrigan 
was one of that kind. Why, she could just tell you 
her troubles and of the ingratitude she had encoun- 
tered until you felt that life itself were all too short 
to redress even a tenth of Pearlie's wrongs. And then 
the operation she had undergone ! And the doctor who 
had never had a case so baffling, nor one that needed 
so many instructions and injunctions about food and 
other things when the hospital no longer held it ! Why 
it seemed as if the doctor spent all his waking mo- 
ments wondering if Pearlie were real faithful in carry- 
ing out his orders. 



126 Second Suds Sayings 

"Well, I dunno what Dr. Martin would say if he saw 
me now, working lil^e this," continued Pearlie, as she 
sorted out shimmering piles of collars and cuffs from 
other shimmering piles of collars and cuffs. 

Ellen comforted the conscience-stricken former 
patient with a word or two, and then listened, with 
a softened expression, to a burst of song from the 
office. 

"Over there, over there !" rang out the clear sweet 
voice of Mame Fisher, the girl-behind-the-counter. 
Mame had a voice that would charm the birds off the 
trees. Ellen's boy had written her about Mame be- 
fore Ellen came on to New York, and when Tim came 
in from Camp Upton it was at Manie's desk he lin- 
gered longest. Ellen had formed the habit of watch- 
ing Mame as a prospective daughter-in-law. Ellen 
could put two and two together as well as anybody. 

Mame sang on, the splendid, courageous swing of 
the big war song filling every corner of the room and 
floating far back into the workroom. The machinery 
heaved, and the workers moved more swiftly and 
cheerily as each heart thrilled with the message of the 
day. The words touched in some way every soul in 
the place, as is the way with great war songs — as was 
the way especially with the song to which our boys 
marched down in Cuba: 

"There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight." 

Suddenly the song ceased and conversation took its 
place. A male voice in uncertain English wafted back 
to the marking room. Ellen leaned over to see who 
was there. 

"Who's that?" she asked Pearlie Harrigan. Pearlie's 



Second Suds Sayings 127 

position was one of especial value as an observer of 
all that went on in the office. 

"That? Oh that's Mame's Eyetalian Count," said 
Pearlie with a sniff of scorn. 

Ellen moved her position to a place where she could 
better watch the progress of the conversation. A dark 
man was leaning over Mame's desk and, with numer- 
ous and diversified gestures, was telling a long story. 

"See the Count, layin' it off with his hands," said 
Pearlie. Wouldn't it kill you the way them foreigners 
with all their ignorance try to get around us smart 
American girls !" 

The "Count" had shown no desire to "get around" 
Pearlie, but possibly Pearlie was taking up the cudgels 
in the cause of "smart American girls" generally. 

"You'd oughta see the d^me he brings in with him 
sometimes," Pearlie went on, "that is no name for it. 
Why she hasn't any miore figger than a bag of flour. 
No wonder he likes to come in and see some girlish 
figgers once in a while!" And Pearlie complacently 
smoothed down her stiff white shirtwaist. Pearlie 
would never see thirty again, but she rejoiced every 
day of her life that she had "kept her girlish figger." 

The "Count" talked on, and Mame listened, laugh- 
ingly shaking her head now and then. 

"But yes, I tell you," came the voice of the dark 
gentleman — I might say the dark voice of the dark 
gentleman, for voices have complexions, you know. 

"And what is he tryin' to tell her— the big-eyed 
divil?" asked Ellen O'Brien. 

Forgive Ellen — it was Tim's sweetheart that the 
"Eyetalian" was apparently making love to, and it was 
really more than human nature, especially Irish human 



128 Second Suds Sayings 

nature, could stand to see the like of that going on and 
not take a hand in the affair. 

Ellen coughed warningly, and emerged from the 
workroom to the office. 

Mame straightened up, and the "Eyetalian" also 
straightened up, but smiled with most disconcerting 
sweetness at the grim "forelady." People did not usual- 
ly smile sweetly when Ellen O'Brien approached — she 
was too downright sensible-looking for that. One 
might smile at her respectfully, even ingratiatingly, but 
never sweetly. Ellen's face had been set to the notes 
of what she had believed to be the realities of life, and 
her expression held forth no hope that a note of sweet- 
ness would be met with understanding. 

Yet the "Eyetalian" smiled sweetly. "Them for- 
eigners" sometimes see deep down into souls, and it is 
possible that this one saw in the face of the grim 
forelady not the soul seared by blighting experiences, 
but the brave, loving mother who had given a man to 
her country, to fight side by side with the English, 
the French, the Italians — all those men who were 
ranged on the side of Right. 

And, strange to say, the suspicion that the grim 
"Signora" had come forth to save Mame from his evil 
machinations never crossed the mind of the "Eye- 
talian." 

. As I say, "them foreigners" sometimes see deep into 
souls. I don't think Ellen really thought that he was 
an evil man after she had seen him smile. 

Mame began to look among the bundles on the shelf 
for the "Eyetalian's" clean linen. 

"Got a bundle back there for Mr. Scarlatti, Pearlie?" 
she called back. 



Second Suds Sayings 129 

"Nope!" Pearlie called back. "Won't be ready till 
tomorrow !" — ^at the same time giving an evening shirt 
with the name "Scarlatti" a shove to one side. Let 
him wait — it would do him good. He had no business 
bringing his laundry here, anyhow, just to hang around 
Mame. 

"Never mind ; oh, never mind, Mees Mamie," and the 
"Eyetalian" raised a protesting hand. "I will call 
again, I will call again" ; and, smiling, assuring, prom- 
ising, the man withdrew. 

Mame gazed absent-mindedly out of the window. 
It really loked as if she were in love and Ellen had 
caught her in her guilt. The "forelady" watched her 
closely. Mame was not pretty; she was something 
more dangerous — a woman who could love. Pretty 
girls and women and near-pretty girls and women, and 
girls and women who were out-and-out ugly swarmed 
in the Great White Way Laundry, but they were all 
far more likely to go unscathed by the little blind God 
than Mame, because they were, most of them, bundles 
of dressed-up conceit and very much alive to their own 
interests. Mame was all loving Irish eyes, warm heart, 
and music. The "forelady" had decided long ago that 
Mame needed more care and sympathy than all the 
others put together. 

"That 'Eyetalian' been bringing his laundry here 
very long ?" she inquired casually. 

"Three or four months, I guess," Mame answered 
— not at all like a girl in love, who would be likely to 
know to a day when her loved one had come upon the 
scene. 

"Aw, she's playin' off," said Pearlie later on. "That 



130 Second Suds Sayings 



feller's been comin' in and out, sayin' sweet nothings 
to Mame for I'd hate to say how long." 

The "Pearlies" of life manage, somehow, to blight 
optimism, don't they? 

And, hope dying out in Ellen's heart, she entered 
on a long siege of suffering on account of the calling 
"Eyetalian." 

5^ * * 

The working days passed. Linen came in, went the 
cleansing course, and was distributed throughout the 
city, or given out over the office counter by Mame with 
one of Mame's own Irish smiles. And the "Eyetal- 
ian's" linen never failed to appear each week, nor the 
"Eyetalian" himself, with something especially inter- 
esting to say to Mame. 

* * * 

One day in October, the sun was dancing up and 
down the pillars of the elevated road, and the smoke 
blew up from the housetops, straight as an arrow, to 
the clear sky. It was one of those New York days 
when the air is like wine, and when the sunshine lights 
up the old bricks and mortar like scattered gold. 

The "Eyetalian" entered the laundry with a flower 
in his coat, a fragrant flower. Ellen watched him from 
the workroom. His coming had spoiled her day. But 
the "Count" himself was guilelessly ignorant of the 
condition of Ellen's heart. He did not know that he 
was a villain. The air was tangy with Autumn, and 
the heart of the "villain" sang. The poor, sad-faced, 
hard working woman who watched him from the rear 
— he was sorry for her, so sorry! He would smile at 
her so she would know that he wanted her to be hap- 
py, too. 



Second Suds Sayings 131 

Ellen grimly responded to his greeting. The thoughts 
that surged in her heart would not bear printing. 
Again the low tones at Mame's desk and the low pro- 
tests from Mame. Ellen stepped forward the better to 
listen. Duty is duty. 

"And by the first of the year you could be ready to 
go to France," the "Eyetalian" was saying. 

Ellen was aghast. The impudence, the confounded 
impudence (forgive Ellen) of that foreigner talking 
such talk to Mame, the office girl of the Great White 
Way Laundry — a good, hard working girl like Mame ! 
It must be "easy" he thought she was. Ellen came 
nearer, but interest between the two was at such a 
scandalous pitch that neither noted the nearness of the 
Laundry Mother. 

"The pay, eet ees is not so much," the man went 
on ; "but your expense — it shall all be paid, and " 

"Stop right there !" said the "forelady" of the Great 
White Way Laundry. "You villainous Eyetalian, what 
do you mean, what do you mean?" and Ellen O'Brien 
placed a good sized workingwoman's fist under the 
nose of a very much astonished man. "Tell me what 
you mean by hanging around our office, trying to cor- 
rupt the finest little girl we've got in this place !" 

"Trying to c-o-r-r-u-p-t ?" gasped the "Eyetalian. 
"Trying to c-o-r-r-u-p-t, you say? But, Madame you 
no understand !" 

"Yes, trying to corrupt, is what I said !" replied El- 
len. "And now you git before my Tim comes up from 
Camp Upton and give you a good lambasting !" 

(Forgive Ellen. Like the lady in the poem, "Her 
manners had not that repose.") 

"Lambasting!" gasped the "Eyetalian." He had 



132 Second Suds Sayings 

learned a new English word, but he would have gladly 
forgotten it. It was as hot as red pepper in his mouth. 

"Oh, Mrs. O'Brien, please, please stop!" pleaded 
Mame, trying to stem the tide of her wrath. "You 
don't understand — please, please, wait a moment." 

"And what is it I don't understand, Mamie Fisher? 
— me that's old enougli to be your mother!" panted 
Ellen, exhausted from her effort to save Tim's sweet- 
heart from the wiles of the "Eyetalian Count." 

"Why, you don't understand that this gentleman is 
Signor Scarlatti, one of the most noted singing teach- 
ers in New York, and that he has heard me singing in 
the office, and has been wanting me for a long time 
to let him place me with a unit that is going overseas 
to sing for the soldiers — and he says if I begin prac- 
ticing now I can go by the first of January." 

"And, Madam," the "Eyetalian" inserted in the 
pause, "this young lady have a voice — ah, she have a 
voice that will carry her anywhere she chooses to go ! 
She has one great gift — never hav I heard so sweet 
sounds from any American ! "And, Madame, the man 
added, with a profound bow, "she hav heart!" 

"And why didn't you tell me all this before?" said 
Ellen, not entirely convinced that Mame's interest in 
the foreigner was purely artistic. For Tim's sake, she 
must know the entire truth. 

"Why, Mrs. O'Brien," faltered Mame, "I didn't say 
anything because — because — " and Mame's voice grew 
fainter — "I wanted to know what the country wanted 
of Tim first. If Tim was going to France, I wanted 
to go, too ; but if Tim was going to stay here " 

"You see," said the "Eyetalian," gleefully, "she have 



Second Suds Sayings 133 

the Irish heart — the heart that can love." He had 
thrown himself heartily into the general cheer-up of 
the occasion ! 

Ellen O'Brien gasped. It had come to her as it 
comes to most of us, this wonderful experience of see- 
ing clouds of doubt and worry sail away, and a long, 
smiling, sunny path ahead of us. She went over to the 
girl and clasped her in her arms. The "boss' had said 
to be a mother to the girls and women, but he did not 
know how easy it would be for Ellen to be a mother to 
Mame. 

"And my wife — she will come tomorrow and talk 
about it to you, Madame," smiled the man. "My wife 
— she ees so fine, so kind. And Mees Mamie, eef she 
prac ze singin' an' ze actin', she, too, will have ze fine, 
sweet maners lik' my wife. Singers are no — skeeny, 
you call eet ?" and he smiled sweetly and encouragingly 
as he passed out. 

It was the final argument that convinced Ellen that 
the artistic "Eyetalian" was simply following a voice. 
Mame — "skinny," mannerless, business-like Mame — 
might be ever so attractive to Tim, but to the foreigner 
she was simply a voice that must not be lost in the 
shuffle of New York business life. Mame, singing 
"Over There," might thrill the musician; but Mame, 
as a woman — well, the "Eyetalian" could only pity 
her ! He had followed Mame's voice, and had proba- 
bly followed other voices, but his heart was with the 
velvet-eyed, plump woman for whom he opened the 
door very wide. 

"And what," said Ellen O'Brien, "is the use of wor- 
rying over things that most likely won't ever happen ?" 



134 Second Suds Sayings 

Really, it seemed as if on this great day nothing but 
good was to befall Ellen O'Brien, for it was on this day 
that the whole world was holding its breath with the 
rumors, growing stronger and stronger, that the war 
was nearing its wonderful end. The day sparkled on ; 
expectancy was in the air; newsboys called "Extra!" 
Then Tim stood in the dorway of the workroom, and 
said: 

"Mother !" 

Then, when Ellen was being held close in the em- 
brace of her boy, Tim, he added, tenderly, lovingly, 
"Mother, the war is almost over !" Whereupon, Mame 
— "skeeny," without-any-manners Mame — who Tim 
had always loved and who had loved Tim all along, 
came slowly over, taking her place in the arms of the 
O'Brien family. 

Then Tim told of an opportunity with a laundry 
machinery company for a young man who could speak 
P>ench fluently, to go to France to sell and install laun- 
dries in that devastated country. "And, Mother," 
added Tim, "I don't know of any young man of the 
laundry trade who can 'parley-voo' as I can ! I'm al- 
most sure I can land the job." 

Ellen and Mame clapped their hands. Tim's obstin- 
acy in studying French was vindicated. He had had an 
idea, and had done something that not one American 
youth in a thousand had thought of, as the call to the 
colors and the examinations in the personnel of officers 
in the training camps had proved. Scarcely a recruit 
had entered the army who knew anything of the lan- 
guage of the country to which he might be sent. And 
this despite tlie fact that in all the evening schools of 



Second Suds Sayings 135 

the big cities, and in all the day schools throughout the 
country, there are free classes in French, Spanish and 
every other language that one may wish to acquire. 

"What was good enough for my Dad is good enough 
for me" was a theory we often heard expressed in pre- 
war days; but this theory had no plance in the plans 
of either Tim or Mame. They knew, as we all ought 
to know, that each generation should proceed a little 
further in education and culture than the one before it. 
No time-worn, cobwebby theories should satisfy youth, 
nor the guardians of youth. 

Tim, the student and thinker, and Mame, the aspir- 
ing musician, were destined to grow and achieve in 
the most wonderful period of history. 

War had disarranged lives, and now it is rearrangr 
ing them — as has been the way of wars since the be- 
ginning. 



A RUSHER. 



By Opie Read. 



Once, while traveling on a rough road that al- 
ternately stretched and humped itself along the 
line dividing Arkansas and the Indian Territory, I 
found it, or rather thought it would be, to my busi- 
ness interests to put up, for a day or two, at a 
dingy, weather-boarded tavern near the roadside. 
The next day after my arrival I asked the proprietor 
of the hotel if there was a laundry in the neighbor- 
hood. He pointed to a shanty a short distance 
down the road and said : "Down yander is one 
of the best in the country, sah." 

I went down to the place, awoke an old fellow 
who lay asleep on a bench, and asked him if he 
could wash a few shirts for me. 

"How many," he wanted to know, rubbing his 
eyes. 

"Three," I answered. 

"Oh, yas; wash 'em fur you finer than a fiddle. 
How soon mout you want 'em?" 

"Within four days from now." 

"All right; I'll have 'em on time, for let me tell 
you right here that I am a rusher. Folks often 
say that I'll hurt myself powerful if I don't stop 



Second Suds Sayings 137 

« 

rushin' so, but I jest go ahead, knowin' that I've 
got a constitution like a alligator." 

"Will you send the shirts up to the hotel?" 

"Shore pop." 

"Now don't fail." 

"Never failed in my life, fur as I said jest now, 
I am a rusher." 

I went away, believing, of course, that the "rush- 
er" would be on time, but as the hour of my de- 
parture approached, I could not help but feel a little 
anxious. The shirts did not come. I hastened to 
the "laundry" ; the "rusher" sat leaning back against 
the wall, smoking a cob pipe. 

"Come in an' squat awhile," said he, when I 
stepped into the room. 

"Are those shirts ready?" I asked. 

"Podner, you don't want them shirts today, do 
you?" 

I tried to control my temper, "Of course I do; 
why didn't you send them to the hotel?" 
. "I would 'a' done it, but the fact is, I am so par- 
ticular." 

"Particular!" 

"Yes, you can't treat a fine shirt like you do a 
common one." 

"I don't understand you." 

"Well, I wanted your shirts to look nice, and have 
had to wait." 

"What for?" 

"Soap. You see, sorter expectin' that a fine shirt 
mout drap in on me, I began to make preparations." 

I wanted to see how far I could induce him to go 
into the absurd, and asked : 



188 Second Suds Sayings 

"What sort of preparations?" 

"Well, you see a travelin' man come along- here 
some time ago, and had two biled shirts washed, 
and kicked on the soap, an' said I had oughter get 
some white soap that is made in the east. Well, 
as I say, I kidn't know but a fine shirt might drop 
in on me, and — " 

"You sent an order," I suggested. 

"Yes, gave it to them squar'." 

"And the soap didn't come, I suppose?" 

"Now lemme tell you. Jest about the time it 
aughter been here, 'long come a letter from the soap 
makers askin' me for references. That beat my time. 
Didn't know before that a man had to give refer- 
ences to git soap. I bought a pound an' a half of 
saft soap from old Jerry Collins in Ft. Smith — let 
me see, it was in the fall of seventy-nine, I believe 
— an' he tuck my money an' never said a word 'bout 
references." 

"So the soap didn't come?" 

"They wanted references, I tell ye, an' I have 
been so busy that I haven't had time to send them. 
Got any chawin' tobacker about yur clothes?" 

"No." 

"Search yourself." 

"I haven't any, I tell you. So you didn't wash the 
shirts — " 

"Because that house in the east wanted refer- 
ences," he broke in. 

"Why didn't you use common soap?" 

"Well, I didn't think you'd like that ; had a little 
of that pound-an'-a-half left, but a hog got into the 
house an' eat it up. Set down awhile, podner." 



Second Suds Sayings 139 

"I don't want to sit down. By the way, have 
you any more excuses to offer?" 

"Yes, you see these air Chrismus times, an' you 
kaint expect a man, even if he is a rusher, to work 
on Chrismus." 

"Why didn't you tell me that at first?" I asked. 

"Wall, you see, I didn't think Chrismus was so 
near. I am rushed so hard I lose sight of dates once 
in a while. If I had 'a' knowd Chrismus was so 
near, I woulder made other arrangements. I hire 
a nigger to help me, but they would turn him out 
of the church ef he was to work Chrismus. Yes, 
Chrismus jest happened to hit me in the wrong time 
this year ; an' besides that, I've had other bad luck." 

"What other bad luck have you had," I asked. 

"Wall, the branch is froze over." 

"What has that to do with it?" 

He took his pipe from his mouth and gave me a 
look of pity. 

"What has that to do with it?" he repeated. 
"Look here, whar was you raised, anyhow? Do 
you reckon I want to go down thar an' wash shirts 
in a hole in the ice? Do you think I'm a fool? 
Mister, I am a rusher, but I want to tell you that 
I ain't a polar bear." 

"Why don't you bring the water to the house," 
I asked. 

"Look here," said he. "Do you think I'm goin' to 
buy a bucket jest on account of a few shirts? As I 
may have told you before, I'm a rusher, but I'm 
not a Jay Gould." 

"Well, give me the shirts, anyway." 



140 Second Suds Sayings 

"Podner, I have a contract to wash them shirts, 
an' I karn't afford to let 'em go." 

"Look here; if you don't give me those shirts 
I'll have you arrested." 

He smiled. "All right," said he, "but let me tell 
you somethin'. I'm a jestice of the peace, an' ef 
you say anythin' more about them shirts I'll have 
you arrested for contempt of court. Do you hear?" 

I heard; I didn't care about antagonizing him, 
either, for I doubted not that he could have me 
locked up. 

"Let me have the shirts and I will pay you for 
them. What would washing them have been 
worth ?" 

"Wall, sixty cents." 

"All right; here is your money." 

"But hold on," said he. "I kaint afford to let 
shirts go out lookin' that bad. It would injure my 
trade. Thar ought to be some off-set to that, you 
know." 

"You are a wolf," I exclaimed. 

"All right. You called this court a wolf. I'll 
call that half-breed constable and tell him to lock 
you up." 

"Hold on," said I. "How much money will satis- 
fy you?" 

"As an off-set to the damage that may be done 
my house?" 

"Yes." 

"Wall, about a dollar." 

"Here is your money; give me the shirts." 

Just as I turned to go, he said: "Ef you ever 



Second Suds Sayings 141 

ketch yo'self in this neighborhood agin, don't furgit 
the rusher." 

"I shall not." 

"Hold on a minit. If you really want them shirts 
washed, I'll override all my bad luck and do it for 
you." 

"How soon," I asked, not with any hope that he 
would accommodate me, but with a desire. to see 
how much farther he could play the rascal. 

"Well, by stretchin' a point I might have them 
for you to-morrer mornin'." 

"Of course you would make no extra charge?" 

"How extra charge?" he asked. 

"Why, you would not charge me any more than 
you have already done." 

"Oh, yes, podner, I'd have to charge you extra. 
You see I can't afford to overcome bad luck unless 1 
have extra pay. It's bad luck, anyhow, to fool with 
bad luck, but I am willin' to run the risk if you'll 
pay me enough." 

"How much," I asked. 

He began to scratch his head. The old rascal 
actually believed that he had me again. 

"Well now, let me see. I reckon — but it's foolin' 
with bad luck." 

"Yes." 

"Well now, let me see. 'Rithmetic alius was 
hard for me to handle. Never could do much with 
it, but I'm way up yonder on jografy. Five's a 
five an' naught's a naught. Six into five won't go, 
an' don't have nothin' to carry. I'm gettin' at it 
now," he added, pretending to be deep in mathe- 



142 Second Suds Sayings 

matical communion with himself. "Six won't go 
into five, but goes right into seven without argy- 
ment, an' one to carry. I've got it. I'll wash 'em 
for seventy-five cents." 

"All right," said I, "but I must have references." 
"Go on now, podner. Blamed if I don't believe 
you stand in with them fellers that makes the white 
soap." 



IF. 

By Wm. E. Fitch. 



If you were me, and I were you, 
What wonder working things we'd do. 
We'd see the good in everyone. 
We'd do our work like it were fun, 
We'd gossip never, nor be blue, 
If you were me, and I were you. 

If you were me, and I were you, 
We'd both be better through and through. 
I'd see your virtues, you'd see mine. 
The effect would be like some old wine — 
No word of censure e'er would brew. 
If you were me, and I were you. 

So let's change places and just do 
As you'd have me, and I'd have you. 
You work and laugh and love and sing 
And I will do the self-same thing. 
We'll paint the world a rosy hue, 
When you are me, and I am you. 
* * * 

Now, ain't it the truth? That little word if stands 
in the way of many a perfectly ordered proposition. 
Perhaps, if you were me you would write about a big- 
ger thing than the word if. But I'll bet a nice fresh 
cookie that you cannot find a word in the English Ian- 
gauge that is used more, and is as often in the way, as 



144 Second Suds Sayings 

is this little two-lettered barrier. If you can, let me 
know about it. 

If I had been born rich instead of so full of virtues 
(?) I might now be running an automobile instead of a 
laundry ; or if I had not been born at all probably both 
* me and the world in general would have been spared 
a lot of trouble. Surely you would have been spared 
this article. 

If all men were good, here and now, there would be 
no occasion for a torrid hereafter. Neither would we 
need policemen and jails, and the preachers would lose 
their calling. Perhaps a lot of them would go into the 
laundry business, as "cleanliness is next to Godliness." 

If all competitors were honest and would "do unto 
others as they would have others do unto them" there 
would be less need for associations than there now is, 
but there would still be need of organizations if our 
educations are to continue to advance toward the goal 
of perfection. 

If all things were right, here and now, we would 
lose all the fun of working to better our conditions, 
and they do tell me that "the fun is all in working to- 
ward the goal" and not in the arriving at it. Most of 
us have the means at hand to find all the happiness the 
human mind can realize. And that consists in doing 
our work like it were fun. Having a care for the rights 
of others. Laughing often and loud. Thinking much 
and talking only when we have something to say. Put- 
ting the "kibosh" on idle talk, such as gossiping and 
faultfinding. In other words, doing as you would have 
me to do if you were me, and I were you. 

If "Life is just one damn thing after another" it is 



Second Suds Sayings J 45 

because we are living it that way. The fault is in the 
individual, and not in life. If our pathway is strewn 
with thorns instead of roses, it is because there is 
something wrong with our system. Our ledger is out 
of balance. We need to take a trial balance oftener. 
To see that our debits are equal to our credits. Most 
of us are continually looking for credits which we do 
not care to go out of our way to earn and trying to 
dodge debits that belong to us with interest. 

If we were all as willing to do right as we are to 
have the other fellow ; if we would view our own acts 
with as critical eyes as we view our competitors'; if 
we would pay less attention to the doings of others 
and more attention to our own doings, we would find 
this world advancing by leaps and bounds, and, of 
course, our interests must necessarily advance with 
the rest. 

And, now, what is the reason for all of these ifs? 
Is it not that we are continually waiting for the other 
fellow to do it first ? As kids, when the chip is placed 
upon our shoulder, we fight if the other fellow knocks 
it off. Why? Simply because someone has told us 
what to do. We do not think for ourselves, but do 
things because someone else has done them before us. 
A lot of us run around all through life with chips on 
our shoulders, and it is only reasonable to suppose that, 
since our early beliefs have taught us to fight when the 
chip is knocked off, the reason we carry it around 
is because we want to fight, but we want to be excused 
from the responsibility of starting the scrap and take 
refuge behind the fact that someone knocked off our 
chip. Too bad it isn't our block, in most cases. 



146 Second Suds Sayings 

Who has not heard the individual say: "Oh, I am 
ail right. I never do this and I always do that, but 
Dicky Smith, down street there, he is the cause of 
all the trouble in this town." I feel like throwing my 
arms around the neck of the man who will acknowl- 
edge that he is wrong with the rest. There is hope 
for him. The mere fact that he realizes his imperfec- 
tion and acknowledges it is sufficient evidence to con- 
vince me that he is willing to change his policy. But 
where the egotist admits that he is "perfection person- 
ified" and that every one of his competitors are so 
crooked that they cannot get through his door, it is a 
good safe bet that he is the original crooked man from 
Crooksville. 

The way to get the best of the ifs is to take the 
initiative. Be original. Do the thing that appeals 
most to your sense of right, and head the procession. 
Anyone can get the price for his work if he is bolstered 
up by all others engaged in his line of business. There 
is nothing individual about that. That is the weak spot 
in trade unionism. It is a poor thing for the incom- 
petent workman and a poor thing for the skillful and 
industrious man. In the first place, it makes the in- 
competent satisfied with himself and he quits trying, 
and it kills the ambition of the skillful man because he 
is carrying dead weight. So it is in business. Do the 
work. Learn that "the science of business is the sci- 
ence of service. He profits most who serves best." 
And then see that you serve best. 

Don't be a sucker. If you are you will begin every 
sentence with an if. Stand out firmly on your own 
number elevens. You know the sucker is always a 



Second Suds Sayings 147 

dwarf because it feeds on the main stock. Be the main 
stock. Someone will come along directly arid clip off 
the sucker. 

So then, it is here we finish the story of the if. If 
you, dear reader, are an iffer-— and, of course, you are 
not — take it from the pastor you are on the wrong 
track. Switch over on the main line and become a 
doer. Takes up too much time seeing if the other fel- 
low is going to do it first. Get busy with that fellow 
who walks around in the shade of your skypiece, or 
it is you for the dust heaps of oblivion. If I were not 
going down to Springfield to the big Illinois conven- 
tion I would tell you where I got all of the above in- 
formation, but, as I am pressed for time, I hope you 
will find out, if you care to know. 



AHEAD OF THE WORLD. 



By Wolf von Shierbrand. 



A few years ago I accompanied Hon. F. H. Wins- 
ton, of Chicago, on his mission to Persia, he having 
been appointed United States Minister to the court 
of the Shah. In my capacity as secretary to the Chi- 
cago diplomatist I am in a position to affirm that he — 
like all good Chicagoans — is very particular in the mat- 
ter of laundry work done for him. Spotless, snowy, 
glossy, well-laundered linen is an important adjunct 
to happiness with him, and it is safe to say that he 
does not feel happy unless he wears linen possessing 
all those qualities. Anybody who has ever had the ex- 
perience of being at a formal party of importance — 
such as a diplomatic dinner, a reception at which honor 
is to be done a personage of vast influence and high 
social standing, etc., — either in the capacity of host 
or prominent guest, with a soiled, crumpled or yellow- 
ish shirt front, instead of the proverbial immaculate 
one, will readily agree with Mr. Winston, and I am free 
to confess that so far as I am concerned I was in 
thorough sympathy with him, so was his son Dudley, 
who made the third of our small party of exploration. 
The amount of misery and personal discomfort one 
may extract out of a badly laundered collar, cuff, shirt 
or handkerchief on certain occasions is really amazing, 



Second Suds Sayings 149 

out of all proportion, in fact, to the intrinsic merits of 
the case. 

After this prelude of pain, I may recur to our varied 
experience — in the matter of laundry work performed 
— during our trip to, residence in and return from 
Persia. It was remarkable how disgust with the man- 
ner in which this particular work is done abroad 
thickened and* intensified the farther from home we 
got. Certainly, good laundry work is done in England, 
France, Germany, Belgium and Holland. But it is 
done "few and far between." At the hotels when we 
left our soiled linen — even at such leading and high- 
priced ones as the Grand Hotel in London, and the 
Hotel de I'Athenee in Paris — our things were returned 
to us very far from that state of resplendency we 
were accustomed to look for in this country. The vast 
bulk of the laundry work is done very poorly — ^by poor 
widows and other washer-women who never made the 
business a study, but only a makeshift for a living. 
Large public laundries, such as exist in this city, for 
instance, by the score, where the work is done prompt- 
ly, economically and efficiently, hardly exist at all in 
even the most progressive of European countries. 
There are private laundries, working on a certain line 
of goods only used for a limited circle of customers, 
in the larger cities, such as London, Paris, Berlin, 
Vienna, etc., and they turn out some very fine work. 
But they charge fancy prices. They, as a rule, only 
bother with things of high intrinsic value, as old and 
rare laces, fine curtains, exquisite shirts of "batiste," 
etc., and their capacities are so limited that they are 
hardly able to meet the demands made upon them. 
In the households of wealthy aristocrats over there 



150 Second Suds Sayings 

quite often laundresses of skill and experience are em- 
ployed, and they do creditable work. But that, too, 
is done entirely by hand, according to a very slow 
process, and costs very high. It is impossible to get 
a fine shirt returned within less than a fortnight. All 
the rest of the work is done poorly, inadequately. 
There are, it is true, in Paris large laundering estab- 
lishments, but these merely give facilities for good 
work to the laundresses, who have to pay so much for 
making use of those facilities. They are not laundries 
as we understand the word over here. 

However, in all those countries the laundry work — 
while vastly inferior when compared with an Ameri- 
can standard — is still tolerable on the whole. It is 
much worse in the south and in the far east of Europe. 
In Rome and Naples, for instance, I didn't see a single 
well laundered collar, cuff or shirt on any one of the 
natives. The work is done slovenly, carelessly, in hap- 
hazard fashion. You send a bundle to any one of the 
thousand and one washerwomen, and the chances are 
decidedly that either you don't get it back at all, or 
that you get it a week later than promised, done very 
poorly and with half the things exchanged — shirts be- 
longing to the Marchese Parmesane Cheese instead of 
to you, and collars belonging to some noble brigand 
holding forth in some mountain fastness of the Abruz- 
zi. And, besides, you'll be cheated any way you try it. 
You'll be cheated in the price, in withholding your 
things, and in mixing them up. I remember how I 
got SOX five sizes too large — belonging to an English 
gentleman who had left for the north a week before, 
and the farther you go the worse it gets. In Greece 
they don't wash your shirts and things at all. They 



Second Suds Sayings 151 

merely beat them with a big, broad, wooden fK)under 
over some running water, without soap, and the same 
thing (only with a trifle of soap added) is true of the 
whole southern half of Italy and of the southern part 
of France. It is enough to turn one's stomach to see 
the array of "clean" clothes hung in the sun to dry — - 
extending from house to house, across a narrow street, 
exposed to all the dust and soot in the atmosphere. 
On the road from Naples to the excavated ancient 
cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum I noticed hung 
up on clothes lines, stretched out side by side for a mile 
or so, such "clean" linen side by side with macaroni — 
both hung up to dry and one looking as yellow as the 
other. The same picturesque sight met my eyes in 
Athens, as I descended from the ruins of the Acropo- 
lis. But then, all this was comparatively all right when 
compared with the laundry work in the Caucasus, in 
Turkey and in Persia. There are in those countries 
but relatively very few people who have need of 
laundry work at all. Only resident Europeans or 
Americans, merchants or members of the diplomatic 
corps, need it. Mohammedan women will not wash 
for foreigners and infidels — "dirty giaours" as they are 
in their eyes — at all, no matter how much they should 
be offered for the service. In their estimation such a 
bit of work would render them "impure" and render 
them liable to the disdain and opprobrium of all the 
faithful. Hence it is very difficult to make arrange- 
ments for washing your soiled linen/ in all those 
oriental countries. The only class of women who will 
condescend to do the work are Armenians, Nestorian 
or Chaldean women, nominally Christians. But even 
the best work they do is far, far beneath the poorest 



152 Second Suds Sayings 

laundry work ever done in this country. Two or three 
washings done by them will irretrievably spoil any 
linen, so much so that one has to throw it away on 
reaching civilization again, and has to renew and re- 
place it very frequently as long as one has to stay in 
the Orient. The first batch of laundry work that was 
returned to Hon. F. H. Winston at the American le- 
gation in Teheran, he broke out with, "For the Lord's 
sake, if this is the best they can do with my washing, 
the sooner I resign and go back to Chicago, the better 
it'll be for me." And no wonder ! His fine white 
shirts and collars and cuffs all rendered an ivory yel- 
low or old gold, some of it even having taken on a 
deeper bronze hue ; all the buttons off, and the bosoms 
twisted out of shape. The whole mass was indeed a 
sight to make any well regulated mind tremble and 
shudder, and this work had been done by a highly 
recommended and trustworthy Chaldean woman, a 
woman who had been doing all the washing for the 
most exclusive part of the diplomatic corps of the 
Persian capital. 

In sober truth, there is no laundry work like Ameri- 
can laundry work. In all essential respects — in prompt- 
ness, thoroughness, in cheapness and in finish — this 
country beats the world in the matter of laundry work. 
Long may she wave — the flag of the American 
laundry owner. 



GOOD ADVICE. 



By Charles Dowst. 



Friend Edwards : Your favor, informing me that 
you had grown tired of receiving orders from train 
dispatchers and husthng old No. 9 train a couple of 
hundred miles per day, at hand. That does not sur- 
prise me, but I am astonished that you should write 
you intend giving up your punch to renovate dirty 
socks. 

The laundry business is as different from railroad- 
ing as day is from night ; and instead of taking orders 
from the superintendent, you will have to take or- 
ders from Tom, Dick and Harry, if you want to suc- 
ceed, and you can no more talk back than you could 
when upon the carpet in the general superintendent's 
office. 

I know you used to bring No. 9 in on time three 
hundred and sixty-five days in the year, but running 
a laundry is somewhat different from running a pas- 
senger train, where you have the schedule down to 
the minute, a level track and every freight on a siding. 

You say you think of buying a plant already in op- 
eration. If you do you had better look out for danger 
signals, as you will be, in a certain sense, "running 
wild on a stormy night" and "washouts" will be your 
ruin. A laundry plant in operation is somewhat like 



154 Second Suds Sayings 

a passenger locomotive that has run for years, it may- 
be good and do the work, but the chances are that it 
will do better service on a slow freight, or switching. 
It is the same with an old laundry plant, you can prob- 
ably use it, but more likely you will throw it nearly 
all into the scrap pile before you own it a month, and 
the "trade," my man, look after that sharp. The 
weekly output may amount to hundreds, but you keep 
your eyes open for "passes" and "dead heads." I am 
not joking when I tell you that the latter are as great 
a curse to the laundry trade as to the railroads. 

Now, old man, you will not deny that sometimes on 
train No. 9 you have had enough dead head slips of 
paper handed out on the run to take off all profits 
for a week, and it is the same in the laundry— the 
hotel clerk, boarding-house mistress, agent, steward 
at the club, purser on the boat and a dozen others, 
all want their washing done free, just the same as rail- 
road men, politicians, etc., expect to travel on passes; 
so before you buy that laundry you count up your 
dead heads before making your final report. 

Now, Edwards, I appreciate the fact that we have 
been friends for a long time, and that you were a 
good customer of mine for fifteen or twenty years, so 
I do not want to see you in a grand smash up, and 
will give you all the advice I can. It is hard to make 
time with an old, out-of-date, worn-out locomotive, 
and just as hard to do good work with laundry ma- 
chinery ten or even five years behind the times; so 
think this matter over before you start on your new 
run, and wire me if you conclude you cannot make 
schedule. 



Second Suds Sayings 155 

My closing advice is to look over the matter care- 
fully and then I am certain you will conclude that 
when you are starting on a new run you want a line 
of machinery equal to a new vestibule train, with par- 
lor, dining cars and everything up to date. 

You do not say who is going to be your engineer 
and who you have chosen for head brakeman for 
your new laundry. My man, your selection of laundry 
help is just as important as was your train crew, so 
take my advice and don't pick out men for a passenger 
train who should still be throwing switches and twist- 
ing brakes in the yard. 

Wire me for further orders before leaving station. 
As ever, your old friend, 

Retired Laundryowner. 
* * * 

Friend Edwards : I am glad that you have de- 
cided not to buy an old laundry, but a new plant, and 
that the line of machinery you want is to be equal to 
a brand new vestibule train just from the shop; and 
I am not surprised that the laundry machinery sales- 
men came down on you "like wolves in the fold" when 
you wrote to the different companies that you wanted 
to buy a new outfit. They are a royal set of fellows 
and no doubt the manner in which they wined and 
dined you recalled the days when you took that train 
of "Shriners" over the mountains to the coast. 

Do not be afraid of the laundry machinery boys ; 
they are all better men than you find on any railroad, 
and if you treat them right you can obtain from them 
more information of value to a beginner than in any 
other way. They are in from three to five laundries 



156 Second Suds Sayings 

every working day in the year, and a salesman whose 
head is filled with gray matter instead of sawdust can- 
not help but pick up points of value to any laundry- 
owner, especially a new beginner, so you couple your 
car onto them to stay. 

Your barber was very generous when he said he had 
$60 worth of trade a week he would be glad to let you 
have if you would give 5 per cent more than he was 
getting. But let me tell you that the commission busi- 
ness is the "danger signal" of the laundry trade. I 
am afraid you are running into an "open switch" right 
at the beginning, so come to an emergency stop on the 
agency question, just as an engineer would check a 
train when he saw a red light ahead. You cannot 
any more build up a profitable laundry business by 
giving a high percentage than the general passenger 
agent of any road can get a paying line of transporta- 
tion by dealing with scalpers. So tell your barber 
that you intend to make better time than your com- 
petitors, have a finer equipment, and that you are 
going to run your place to please the general public, 
and make money; but that if you can't get the pas- 
sengers at regular rates you will run empty coaches 
until the public finds out that you are always on time, 
have a double track, and everything first-class. 

Edwards, you know as well as I do that even when 
travel was lightest that the limited trains were filled 
to their utmost capacity ; so why not go into the laun- 
dry business on that basis, as there are as many peo- 
ple who want the best of work, and are willing to pay 
for it, as there are travelers who will pay extra fare 
on a limited. 



Second Suds Sayings 157 

You remember Ed Smith, who was for years head 
brakeman on No. 9, and finally got a punch on a local, 
and only worked as conductor for about three years 
when he started in the saloon business ? Well, he told 
me that he would not have a keg of beer in his cafe; 
that if the class of trade he was going to cater to 
would not buy "export" he was sure he could not pay 
his rent by dishing out keg stuff. You know as well 
as I do how well he has succeeded, and although I 
would not like to be in that business, I nevertheless 
think he started in right, and I believe you ought to 
follow his example. Go in for the high price trade. 
The club man who wears a shirt one day, or perhaps 
one evening, is willing to pay more for laundering it 
than the man who wears a shirt a week. So take my 
advice and cater to the high priced trade, and I am 
sure stock in your laundry will soon be worth as much 
as Pennsylvania. If you don't, it will be worth no 
more than defaulted bonds of some of those roads 
down south that are simply two streaks of rust and 
a mortgage. Heed my advice and let me know your 
decision. Retired Laundryowner. 

* * * 

Friend Edwards : I hardly think I am the proper 
person to select a line of machinery for you, as I 
have been on the shelf for the past five years, and 
laundry machinery that in my time was considered 
Al is today consigned to the scrap pile, and I hon- 
estly believe what I don't know about the latest ma- 
chinery would fill a box car; so do not consider me a 
passenger on that train. But I will give you a few 
general points that will be well for you to heed. 



158 Second Suds Sayings 

To start with, select a building that is well lighted, 
and remember that good light in your wash room is 
as essential to doing good work as air-brakes on a pas- 
senger train. In my day the wash room was invariably 
consigned to a dark basement, but modern laundry- 
owners have learned that the wash room is the founda- 
tion of good work and give it as much attention as the 
civil engineer does the curves and grades when figuring 
on his roadbed. 

Your power plant you must give careful thought, 
and under no circumstances try to save a few dollars 
in that line. The best is none too good, and remember 
that you are going to grow ; so buy a boiler at least 
double the capacity you need to start with, as it is 
cheaper to run a 75-horse power boiler for 50-horse 
power than a 50-horse power boiler that you have to 
crowd, and in a few years you don't have to sell it as 
second-hand and put in a larger one. The above will 
also apply regarding your engine, and- 1 would advise 
you to get your friend, the master mechanic on your 
old road, to aid you in this and I think you will have 
a level track and no steep grades to overcome. 

Your line of machinery can be as readily increased 
as the general manager of the road can increase his 
rolling stock. So buy just what you need to start with, 
but get the best the market affords. 

The general public, to a certain extent, will form 
its opinion of your laundry from the appearance of 
your delivery wagons, so I would advise your spend- 
ing some of the railroad's money that you have saved 
for something extra in that line. Get wagons that are 
showy, with lettering that will attract attention ; lots 



Second Suds Sayings 159 

of silver plate on the harness, and horses that hold 
their heads so high that they could not go under a via- 
duct without unloosening the check. 

Don't be afraid to put a little of your ill-gotten 
gains into advertising, as you will have to let the public 
know that you have started a laundry; so get up 
something original, and if you can't do it yourself hire 
some expert to do it for you. In my day every laun- 
dry used the old worn-out phrases, "Fine Work," 
"Prompt Delivery," and "No Chemicals Used"; but 
now you must have same catchy reading matter or 
your advertisements will stand no show when placed 
alongside of "Spotless Town." 

In selecting your superintendent hire the best man 
you can find, and do not let the question of wages in- 
fluence your decision. You may pay him more than 
others ask, but the right man is cheap at any price, 
and in the long run wil save you money, as there 'are 
a thousand and one leaks he can plug up that you, 
being inexperienced, would never notice. 

The branch office question you mention is an im- 
portant subject, but from many years' experience I 
would say, control your own business ; work for all 
the wagon and drop trade you can, and under no cir- 
cumstances deal with commission drivers, as they will 
leave you just as soon as they get a little better rate. 
I would rather have ten customers that I could call 
my own than a hundred a laundry scalper controls. 

Edwards, I feel sorry for you, as you have no idea 
of the trouble you are up against. There are a thous- 
and and one perplexing questions that will arise in the 
laundry business that a railroad conductor would never 



160 Second Suds Sayings 

have to contend with; so just make up your mind 
that for the next six months you are going to have 
an accident of some sort every day that will keep you 
from making schedule time ; but keep up your courage 
and let the gauge show a full head of steam at all 
times. Yours truly, 

Retired Laundryowner. 



'SHOW PEOPLE'S" LAUNDRY. 



By J. A. Fraser. 



"You have no idea," said a well known soubrette to 
a representative of the National Laundry Journal the 
other day, "you have no idea of the amount of trouble 
we poor women experience 'on the road' in getting our 
laundry work done well and promptly, and at a rea- 
sonable figure." 

The interviewer suggested that the steam laundry 
was almost universal, and that work could be turned 
out in a few hours in a perfectly satisfactory condi- 
tion. Moreover, that the hotels have laundry attach- 
ments. 

"Oh, horror !" interrupted the little lady, "don't men- 
tion hotel work. To begin with, one would need to 
be a capitalist to have one's work done there. Why, 
do you know they seem to think that actresses are 
made of money, and their charges are simply out- 
rageous," and her eyes snapped again at the recollec- 
tion of some preposterous laundry bill. 

After a pause she continued : "Of course, we people 
who do so much traveling necessarily soil a dreadful 
amount of linen; and, besides, in short-skirted parts 
such as I play, a constant supply of lace-trimmed, 
frilled, flounced and variously decorated petticoats is 
absolutely indispensable. In playing one night stands 



162 Second Suds Sayings 

the wash usually accumulates until we reach a three 
night or week date, and then the first thing I do is to 
hunt up a steam laundry and tell them to send to the 
stage door for my bundles. But sometimes I am un- 
able through pressure of business or indisposition to 
do this, and sometimes it happens that I must perforce 
send a few things to the hotel laundry and submit to 
being robbed — yes, robbed !" she repeated emphatically. 

"Now, there is one worse thing on earth than the 
hotel laundry, though you may find a difficulty in be- 
lieving it — that is the chronic nuisanpe, who is per- 
mitted by some — I may even say most — managers to 
haunt the mysterious regions beneath the stage, to ter- 
rify the inexpe'rienced or wheedle the more sophisti- 
cated into entrusting her with the cleansing process. 
Her little specialty is in never keeping her promises, 
except by accident, tearing everything tearable, drag- 
ging off every button dragable, and 'losing' in the most 
mysterious manner such small pieces as collars, hand- 
kerchiefs or other little articles not worth making a 
fuss about. That woman is a nightmare and is only 
able to pursue her nefarious practices by sharing her 
ill-gotten gains with the property-man, stage door- 
keeper or some other minor official of the local mana- 
. ger's staff. 

"What remedy would I propose? I'll tell you. I 
have studied this matter a good deal, and am in a posi- 
tion to give you the benefit of my experience. The 
remedy for our complaint and the downfall of that 
dreadful 'washlady,' as she calls herself, is to be found 
in the enterprise of the laundryowner. 

"How should he proceed? The first thing to do 



Second Suds Sayings 168 

would be to make arrangements with the manager of 
the theatre by which he could send a driver at the 
time the visiting company's trunks are delivered at 
the stage door. All soiled linen is usually carried in 
the theatre trunks and not taken to the hotel, by the 
old stagers — those who have learned to appreciate the 
independent laundry at its true value. Well, if it be- 
came a recognized custom, those who had washing to 
do would go direct to the theatre, where, in each dress- 
ing room, the laundry lists should be hung up in some 
conspicuous position, and in a few minutes the bundles 
could be made up, delivered to the laundry agent, and 
the whole matter would be off 'that' which the actress 
flatters herself by alluding to as her mind. There is 
no reason in the world why the parcels should not be 
returned by 7 o'clock that same evening, checked and 
paid for, and the whole transaction concluded much to 
the satisfaction of the professional and the profit of 
the laundryowner. 

"One thing, though, is sure: The price should not 
be advanced one cent beyond the usual rate, for in our 
business we have a sort of free-masonry which 
spreads information about high charges and all that 
sort of thing in a simply wonderful way. It does not 
take very long for the 'unjust dealer' to be shunned 
like a pestilence by the whole 'show' business. 

"In some companies the property man attends to get- 
ting the laundry done, giving it out and paying for it 
on delivery, but this is seldom the case. And besides, 
most people prefer to do their own business and make 
their own bargains. Don't you? 

"If this plan were carried out as I have outlined it, 



164 Second Suds Sayings 

it would be found a very profitable branch of the busi- 
ness, because, as I said before, people who spend as 
much time as we do amid the grimy dust of railway 
travel find it a hard matter to keep clean." 

"How could the laundry agent find out at what time 
the company would arrive?" asked the reporter. 

"Quite easily — ^provided that the local manager was 
friendly. The agent of the company always knows 
what time his people are due in town, which hotel 
they are to stop at, and all such matters, as it is for 
arranging just such details that he draws his salary. 
Speaking of hotels reminds me of another point. Some 
hotel men are so greedy that they will not let a laun- 
dry agent enter the house to take away a bundle to the 
wash, much less solicit business, and for that reason 
it will be found better all around to conduct the whole 
matter at the theatre. 

"Have I ever had any queer experiences with laun- 
dries. Well, rather ! On one occasion I had been ail- 
ing for almost a fortnight, and it was really a ques- 
tion whether I would not have to lay off and rest. I 
had no maid in those days ; and so, being unable to do 
things for myself, they just went undone. Well, we 
got into a little town in Michigan, and I was horrified 
to find that every blessed skirt I had was too badly 
used up for public exhibition, and, summoning the 
chambermaid, I gave her a section of my wardrobe 
and hurriedly told her I must have them by 7 o'clock. 
Promising to have them in time, she departed and left 
me to my 'study of a new part.' When the time came 
for me to go to the theatre I rang for the chamber- 
maid and was very much delighted, as you may imag- 



Second Suds Sayings 165 

ine, to find that she had completely forgotten my order 
and the very necessary articles were then 'wringing 
wet.* What was to be done? I couldn't go on with- 
out skirts, you know, and the ones I had available wer6 
simply disgraceful. Then the careless maid had an 
inspiration. In a few minutes she had procured a sup- 
ply of the necessary clothing from the landlady's 22- 
year-old daughter. They were just right for length, 
but there never was anything on earth like the way 
they did not fit me around the waist. However, with 
the aid of a paper of pins and a display of consider- 
able ingenuity, I was fixed up to dance through the 
evening without falling apart. But, I tell you, I trem- 
bled sometimes in dread of a catastrophe, which, if it 
had happened, would have fairly brought down the 
house. 

"On another occasion it was my misfortune to de- 
pend on a hotel laundry for some quick work in a town 
too tiny to support a public steam laundry. The things 
were very nicely done up, and I was so grateful that I 
gave the chambermaid some passes for herself and the 
laundry girls who did my washing. She took them 
without much enthusiasm, as I remarked to myself at 
the time, and when I was ready to 'move on' next 
morning I asked her how she had enjoyed the show. 
With a toss of her head she informed me that all 'play- 
actors' were actuated by the evil one, that they would 
one day find themselves in a place several shades hot- 
ter than a laundry drying room, that she was a mem- 
ber of the Salvation Army, and that she had carried 
out my instructions to give the passes to the 'one who 
did my washing' to the very letter — by dumping them 
into the washing machine. 



166 Second Suds Sayings 

"Now, you won't forget what I have told you about 
getting our laundry. It would be an accommodation 
to the show people and a good thing for the laundries. 
By the way, would you like to see my performance 
tonight? Yes? There — take that to the box office 
and reserve your seats. Good-bye," and with an en- 
ergetic hand-shake the jolly little woman dismissed 
her visitor, who went away with the fixed opinion that 
her head at least was properly put on. 



THE ROUTE MAN'S STORY. 



By Frank H. Spearman. 



For two days everything about the laundry had 
seemed to go wrong. The "go-backs" had increased 
with every lot that came down the back way, and 
the drivers were all sitting around the long radiator 
waiting for bundles. Ed. Brown was there, and Big 
Jim Edwards, and besides the younger fellows there 
was a wizened little baldheaded old boy nicknamed 
"Collars," who was reputed to have driven a laundry 
wagon for the Pottawotomie Indians at the time of 
the Black Hawk war. Anyway, when the surveyors 
came to stake out the first corner lots in Chicago 
some one said they found Collars standing at Fort 
Dearborn waiting for their bundles. 

"You must be the oldest boy in the business, Col- 
lars," suggested Big Jim Edwards, as a feeler for a 
yarn. Collars explored his vest pocket for a match, 
and rammed the third finger of his left hand well 
down into his pipe. 

"Not quite," growled Collars. "The oldest laundry 
route man in Chicago, as far as my records go, is 
Sim, who drives for the Eureka. He took Bob Fox's 
place, you know; inherited the white bulldog, the 
silver plated harness, lantern and swell wagon that 
the Eureka bought a good many years ago." 



168 Second Suds Sayings 

"But you promised the other day," persisted Jim, 
"to tell us where you got your nickname." 

"It's an old story," began Collars, deprecatingly. 
"There was a man on my run on the South Side, 
about ten or fifteen years ago, that lived in an old- 
fashioned three story stone front house, away down 
on Drexel Boulevard. It was about four blocks off 
my beat, but after I got started going there I never 
neglected that Drexel call. The man that owned the 
place was named Beebright, and that man was the 
joy of my heart. 

"I never failed on Beebright's package. He 
would sooner go without his breakfast than send 
me away empty-handed. Winter or summer, rain 
or shine, in town or out, Beebright would keep 
something for me, and — it's curious how things 
come about — that was the man that gave me m^y 
name, Collars ; and the blamed thing has stuck to 
me so close that my real name, Martin Clapsaddle, 
isn't worth a cent to me any more. Whenever I 
want a job I can get three dollars a week more any 
time by giving up Collars to the manager than I can 
by asking for a wagon as Martin Clapsaddle. Bee- 
bright — he was one of those quick, hustling, nerv- 
ous, prosperous business chaps that drop into Chi- 
cago from all over the world — Beebright never could 
remember my name. First and last he called me 
everything from Cinch to Harness, and the nearest 
he ever struck Clappsaddle — and that was by ac- 
cident — was Saddlebags. So after he had boxed 
the compass on names for me about three years 
he says, 'Look here, old sport, I'll call you Collars ; 



Second Suds Sayings 169 

and when your hair grows out again on top of 
your head we'll make it Paderewski.' " 

"There wasn't much of a family; just Beebright 
and his wife: and a little eleven year old boy they 
called Martie. Well, up to the year of the World's 
Fair, and right after it, there wasn't anything too 
good for me down at Beebright's, and you bet 
there was nothing in the laundry work that could 
be done in our shop that Beebright didn't get. Then 
somehow things in the business world began going 
wrong, and I could • see things week after week, 
month after month, begin to shrink and shrivel 
down there at the old place on Drexel ; but I guess 
the last thing that they cut down on was my pack- 
age. I didn't see Beebright so much then. Weeks 
would pass sometimes without my getting a sight of 
him. He was working out on the road like a Turk to 
keep his head above water. Everything he had, 
though, he saved for me, and sometimes he's come 
in with two grips loaded to the muzzle with laundry. 
But I noticed his linen was going a long time with- 
out being renewed,, and if I had one fight in the laun- 
dry I had. fifty to see that his frayed collars were not 
sent home with saw edges, and that his shirts after 
they got pretty tender were not torn all to tails on 
the ironers. 

"I could see they were getting harder and harder 
up for money and saving in every possible way to 
curtail expenses, but I was not prepared for what 
followed. One mean March Monday morning I 
drove down there with the rain in my teeth all the 
way — and at that time I didn't have another call 
within eight blocks — and Beebright's bundles had 



170 Second Suds Sayings 

got so small it really wouldn't pay to go around the 
corner for them, but you bet I always went; they 
say I'm an Indian; anyway I don't forget my 
friends. I went to the back door and I rung the 
bell three or four times without getting any answer. 
They had not had a servant about the place for 
months ; in fact, I had not seen Beebright all winter, 
and Mrs. Beebright had grown fifteen years older in 
six months. I stood there shivering in the rain and 
at last banged on the door as hard as I could. I 
don't know what it was but something came over 
me that they were dead, when all of a sudden the 
door opened and a little boy stood there. He 
looked as if he had been crying for a week. I 
asked him where his mamma was. 

" 'She's upstairs sick in bed.' 

" 'Well, that's hard luck, Martie,' I says, trying 
to jolly him up, because the tears were streaming 
down his cheeks right then, and I didn't mind the 
rain streaking into my neck half so much as I did 
that. 

" 'Where's your father ?' I asked. 

" 'He is on the North Side,' Martie said, crying 
and trembling; and I kept right on. 

" 'Where?' I asked like an old fool. 

" 'In jail.' " 

"I'd have given a week's wages to take that ques- 
tion back, but the poor little fellow didn't know how 
to dodge it. I knelt right down there in the door- 
way and took him in my arms until he had his 
cry out. I drove back to the laundry as blue as 
aniline — the old house looked so gloomy when I 



Second Suds Sayings 171 

took my last look at it standing there alone in the 
rain. 

"That afternoon I sent out a substitute and 
started in to make inquiries. I 'rubbered* around 
the jail awhile and was lucky enough to strike a 
guard with a heart as big as an ox — he is jailer 
there now — and found out what they had locked 
Beebright up for. It was debt. One of his credit- 
ors had put him in the debtor's prison and was 
paying his board there just to crucify him. 

"That settled it with me. I asked to go upstairs 
and see him. When he came out of his cell room 
I was so rattled I didn't know him. In fact I 
thought they had make a imstake and called the 
wrong man. He was no more like the man I used 
to know than a corpse. But I braced right up and 
put <5ut my hand. 

" T called to get your bundle, Mr. Beebright.' 

"He looked at me like a dazed man. 'What do 
you mean?' 

" 'Why, you know me,' I answered as strong as 
I could. 'I'm Collars, and I've come for your laun- 
dry, Mr. Beebright.' 

"He went all to pieces ; if I hadn't been that way 
already I'd have gone myself. 

" 'Collars,' says he, when he could speak, 'of all 
my friends and acquaintances you're the first and 
only one to come to see me in jail. Don't you 
know. Collars,' he put both his hands on my should- 
ers and looked the heart square out of me, 'Don't 
you know they say I'm a thief?' 

"It was past locking-up time when I got away. 



172 Second Suds Sayings 

and I never could tell just how I got out of that 
jail. They talked about prosecuting him for ob- 
taining money under false pretenses, but the charg- 
es never would have stuck. They never had the 
cheek to bring him to trial ; he had done nothing 
dishonest. But they did manage to kill his wife 
and to kill him with the disgrace of being sent to 
jail. 

"Everything in the house down on Drexel went 
under the hammer, everything except the eleven 
year old boy, Martie. Beebright had been freed then 
a good while, but he never got over it. I called for 
his bundles right along while he was in jail and 
when he got out. About six months after the first 
morning Martie had told me his father was on the 
North Side I called at Beebright's boarding house, 
a cheap place on lower Wabash avenue, and Martie 
came down and said his father was in bed but he 
wanted to see me, so I went up. The minute I 
looked at him I knew he was going, I sat down 
and took little Martie upon my lap. 

" 'There won't be any bundle this week, Collars,' 
Beebright said, kind of faltering-like, 'except that 
one you have there on your knee. I have got to go. 
My boy has no relations within a good many thous- 
and miles of here. You told me once I had been a 
good friend of yours, Collars. If you can do any- 
thing for Martie — do it.'" 

In the little crowd around the radiator no one 
seemed disposed to ask questions as Collars paused. 
But after a moment he wound up in his own way. 

'T drove back to the laundry and got a man to 



Second Suds Sayings 173 

take out my wagon for the rest of the week. When 
everything was over at the boarding house I took 
Beebright's last bundle — Martie — to the laundry 
with me. 

"That's how Martie Beebright got into the laun- 
dry machinery business. He is a man now and, by 
cracky, if I do say it myself, he can sell laundry 
machinery alongside any of those high-priced men 
they've got down on Clinton street. When I get 
tired of driving a wagon, Martie says I've got a life 
job any old time cashing his pay checks for him, 
and Martie says what I don't need, myself he'll be 
satisfied with for his share of the proceeds. H-m?" 



THE EXTRA OUNCE REQUIRED. 



By E. Ray Speare. 



This is a little talk on the "extra ounce." Someone 
has wisely remarked, "there never was a man yet who, 
no matter how hard he was working, couldn't work 
just a little harder if he found the right incentive." 

In other words, supposing efficiency could be 
weighed like gold or iron — however many pounds of 
energy, ambition, enthusiasm and ability the salesman 
may have put into his work, there is always another 
ounce which can be added to the sum total, and on 
that one ounce may hinge success or failure. 

Bed-ridden invalids, who have not been able to walk 
for years, have been known to arise and scamper on 
an alarm of fire with as much agility as a sprinter in 
perfect training. Fear was an incentive which gave 
them not only ounces, but pounds and hundred-weights 
of strength to meet the occasion. When a salesman's 
business grows slack, and results decrease, it should 
inspire him to feats in salesmanship in just the same 
manner. No matter how many pounds of effort he has 
been exerting, he can always find an extra ounce to add 
to the total if his incentive is strong enough. And that 
extra ounce in most cases is all that is needed to con- 
vince the obstinate prospect, close that sale that has 
has just eluded him and get the business. 

You salesmen on the firing line have had experience 



Second Suds Sayings 175 

which proves all this. How many times have you wound 
up your best argument, your most interesting proposi- 
tion has been turned down, only to come back once 
more at your customer with just one more point and 
one more plea, and done the trick? On the other 
hand, how many men have you left without landing, 
who might have given you that order, if you'd only 
clung on a little longer and used the extra ounce? 

Did you ever stop to think that the strongest bridge 
couldn't stand an extra ounce that exceeded its utmost 
capacity without giving away? Its massive structure 
will stand under all that it was built to stand, but if 
the time comes when the extra ounce proves more than 
it can carry something is bound to break. 

So it is with the selling proposition. There is some 
argument, some fact, some inducement, something that 
will make your customers try your line. You know 
that you've got that extra ounce at your command, and 
the only point is that you mustn't neglect to avail your- 
self of it. 

Haven't you sometimes, after an unsuccessful inter- 
view with a prospect, gone back to the hotel and 
thought, in reviewing the work of the day : "Well, now, 
I believe I could have closed that sale if I had used 
such and such an argument that didn't occur to me till 
this moment?" 

Also, if you have made a fair stroke of business, 
haven't you had occasion to say to yourself : "Perhaps 
if I hadn't been too easily satisfied, and if I had per- 
sisted in talking the thing, I could have got that cus- 
tomer to try our new specialty as well as our regular 
Hne which I sold him?" 



A CHRISTMAS INVASION. 



By Charles Lederer. 



Caleb Whittler sat toasting his feet before a spar- 
khng fire in his room while he glowered at the twist- 
ing flames. No one ever denied that Caleb Whittler 
was the crustiest of crusty old bachelors. He was 
forever scowling at everybody and railing at every- 
thing, and especially did he find much fault with all 
modern improvements. All things were better in the 
olden time of his youth, he declared with an emphasis 
of which only he was capable. According to him tele- 
phones were delusions, railroads snares, and so on 
through the whole category of those things which 
add so much to the comfort and ease of modern man. 

Even on this lovely Christmas eve old Caleb was as 
morose and savage as ever, and he scowled the more 
fiercely because there was no one to scowl at. He 
was ever comparatively happy when there was some 
actual cause of complaint, and on this evening he 
was not entirely miserable. His laundry work had 
not been delivered on time. The clock on the mantel 
indicated twenty-five minutes of eight, and old Caleb 
had given positive orders that his laundry work should 
be delivered not later than half past seven. He had 
so written, in bold characters, on his laundry list, and 
had even twice underscored the figures of the hour. 



Second Suds Sayings 177 

Caleb actually chuckled at the tongue-lashing he 
had in store for the boy who usually delivered the 
goods for the laundry. The minutes crept on, and the 
old bachelor still gazed into the grate full of glowing 
coals. How drowsy the flickering flames of soft coals 
do make one — especially on Christmas eve. 

Suddenly the door opened, and a frowsy looking 
woman entered without even the preliminary of knock- 
ing. Caleb started from the easy-chair which he filled 
so completely, and in surprised tones inquired, "Well, 
what the deuce do you want ?" 

"Well, I've brought yer washin' home to yer, sor." 

"My washing !" repeated Mr. Whittler in wonder. 

"For sure ; and do ye think I'd be bringin' yer a load 
of sawdust, or a basket of cats ?" 

Her tones were insolent, and there was an odor of 
soapsuds pervading her immediate surroundings that 
was extremely repugnant to Caleb Whittler's sensitive 
nostrils. 

"Get out!" yelled the now enraged old bachelor. 
"Get out ! — and devilish quick, too ! You've nothing 
to do with my laundry work." 

"What? After I be a-doin' yer dirty old washin' 
for nigh three years, do you think I'll be insulted and 
sworn at by a crazy man ? Take that, yer rampant old 
villink !" And with that the. infuriated washerwoman 
banged the bundle she carried squarely on the devoted 
but bald pate of our poor old bachelor. The freshly 
ironed linen flew in a shower about him. The woman, 
much to Caleb's relief, left the room. But how she did 
bang the door ! 

Caleb gently caressed the top of his head, and looked 



178 Second Suds Sayings 

about him in a dazed way. "Well, I like this," he 
said, but the hissing way in which he spoke them be- 
lied the words. Suddenly a thought struck him, and 
struck him hard. "Gosh all hemlock !" he murmured, 
grumpily. "She was right, after all. I remember 
now ; she did do my work for years." He looked about 
him. The clothes which the washerwoman had thrown 
at him had disappeared. He had hardly time to voice 
his surprise when there was a knock at the door. 
"Come in !" cried Caleb, petulantly ; and, in response, 
came another female. Her face was red; there was 
an aroma of gin about her. Caleb positively abhorred 
the odor of gin. 

The female spoke : "Here's yer washin' two dollars 
and fifty-seven cents and I'll not wait for me money !" 

"Well, I'll be blowed !" snorted Mr. Whittler. 

The woman threw the contents of the basket rough- 
ly on the chair on which Caleb had been sitting, and 
then extended her hand toward that gentleman. "I 
want me money !" she cried. 

"My good woman," he replied, there is evidently 
some mistake. These clothes are not mine." 

"Not yours !" screamed the woman. "Do you think 
I don't know your clothes when I've been a washin' of 
'em this four year come next Sain' Val'ntine's day?" 

"I guess you are right," responded Caleb, feebly. 
"The other woman must have been' mistaken"; and 
he drew a roll of bills from his vest pocket, selected a 
five-dollar bill and handed it to the woman. 

The washerwoman snatched it eagerly. "I'll bring 
yer change next week," she mumbled, and then she, 
too, was gone. 



Second Suds Sayings 179 

Mr. Whittler examined the shirts, and collars and 
cuffs, and all the other articles of outer and under 
wear. They were evidently his, but there were great 
tears, and there were streaks of blue such as he had 
not seen for years. The bosoms of the shirts were not 
smooth, but instead roughly uneven and crumpled. 
Lumps of starch varied the surface of his collars. 

A ray of fresh recollection came over him. "Why, 
that's all right," he said. "That's the way she always 
does up my things, and, just as she says, she's done 
'em for years — four, I think she said." Strange to say, 
all recollection of the first comer had left him. 

Again there was a knock at the door. Caleb was too 
angry this time to cry "Come in," but the one who 
knocked entered, just the same. Somehow, Mr. Whit- 
tler was not surprised to find that the last caller was 
also a washerwoman, and her face, too, was strangely 
familiar to him. She had a bundle of frayed and tat- 
tered linen which she carelessly threw on the old bach- 
elor's carefully kept dressing-case. These clothes were 
also his — but what a sorry looking lot they were! 
Strangely, the woman did not ask for money, but with- 
drew abruptly, throwing a kiss at poor Caleb as she 
went. Hardly had the woman left ere another enter- 
ed. And another, and another. A procession of be- 
draggled women filed in, each carrying a small load of 
more or less clean linen for Mr. Whittler. That gen- 
tleman seemed quite resigned to the invasion. "Some 
day," he muttered, forgetting his hatred of improve- 
ments, "perhaps there will be an improvement on this 
sort of thing." 

He looked at the articles the women had brought. 



180 Second Suds Sayings 

Some were his, others belonged to other unfortunate 
gentlemen and had been brought to him by mistake; 
while some even — some were articles of feminine 
nether wear. Mr. Caleb Whittler was a very proper 
old party, and he was inexpressibly shocked at this 
latter discovery. 

Once more there was a knock at the door. "Come 
in !" cried Caleb, dreamily. The door opened and — 
Caleb awoke. He had only been dreaming. There 
were no signs of the plague of washerwomen. But in 
the doorway stood a neatly dressed boy with a neatly 
wrapped bundle. It was his laundry work for the 
week. It was twenty minutes of eight by the clock, 
and Caleb had only been dreaming five minutes — but 
how much horror can be crowded into five minutes in 
Dreamland ! 

"Please excuse me for being ten minutes late," said 
the boy in respectful tones ; "but a runaway team ran 
into our delivery wagon, and " 

"Don't say a word, my boy. How much is it? Oh, 
yes, $1.47. Here!" and he handed the boy the same 
"V" that he dreamed the washerwoman had taken. 
"Never mind the change. Keep it for your Christmas, 
my boy, and thank your stars that you live in an age 
of improvement and progress." 

Caleb Whittler was a reformed man. But the boy 
did not know that, and if the old bachelor had taken 
off his coat and showed the boy the nubs where he was 
starting to grow angel's wings the boy could not have 
stared with greater astonishment. 



A STORY FROM CUBA. 



By A. K. Potter. 



In a letter to Mr. Charles Dowst, Editor of the 
National Laundry Journal, A. K. Potter, who is now 
Manager of the Havana Laundry, of Havana, Cuba, 
owned by G. Nunez & Company, tells an interesting 
story. While all of the men who are mentioned "quit 
the road" many years ago, a number of our readers 
would remember them were their real names given. 

"About twenty years ago at a State Asylum for the 
Insane, located about three miles from the capital of 
the State of North Carolina, they were taking bids 
for a new laundry plant. John Doe, who represented 
one large machinery house, is now the owner of a big 
laundry in New York State; Richard Roe, who died 
some time ago, representing another large house, and 
Yours Truly was "using up expense money" for an- 
other concern. We three met in that city on a pleasant 
summer day, all with the same view — that of getting 
the contract. 

"Mr. Doe had already called at the hospital, and so 
had I ; therefore, it was Mr. Roe's turn. We watched 
him to take a buggy and start out, wishing him the best 
of luck, for while we were all deadly enemies when 
together in front of a customer, we were, however, 
pretty good friends when one or the other said, 'What 
will you take?' 



182 Second Suds Sayings 

"The hospital set back from the road something 
more than half a mile, and about three hundred feet or 
more above the road level. There was a nice, beautiful 
drive going up to the asylum, and there was a beauti- 
ful lawn from the asylum down to the road. The 
lawn was built up in terraces — a few hundred feet 
of level, and then a bank of six or eight feet drop to 
the next level. It was this way down to the fence, a 
stone one, about five feet high, all along the roadside. 

"When Mr. Roe got to the asylum, all of the pa- 
tients who could be trusted out from behind the bars 
were working upon this lawn. One had a grass sickle 
in his hand — one of those small half-round 'grass 
hooks' — and as Mr. Roe passed out of the front door, 
after having had his 'spiel' at the superintendent, this 
guy with the sickle yelled at him. He looked back and 
saw the fellow coming more or less rapidly towards 
him. This caused him to walk faster. Then the guy 
with the cripppled intellect and the sickle started to 
run, and so did Roe; but in place of staying in the 
road, Roe struck across the lawn, down towards the 
fence, hitting only the extremely high places. Each 
time he looked back the man with the sickle was still 
on the job and coming strong, and caught Roe just as 
he got to the fence, exhausted and all in. To Roe's 
surprise, instead of making a swipe at him with the 
sickle, the man tapped him lightly upon the shoulder 
and said, 'Tag ; you're it !" Then he started to run 
back the other way. 

"When Roe got back to the Yarborough House he 
was still white. If memory serves me right, he landed 
the order; but he never went back after it; it was 
mailed to him at Chicago." 



HARD ON THE MANAGER. 



By H. H. Spencer. 



When a man comes up from one "state" and tries 
to show you the "state" of your work is rotten and 
that unless you can "state" your reasons why your 
statement must be believed, and that the "state" of 
your work turned out is equal, if not better than your 
competitor's, why it's 

Hard on the manager. 

If your helpers are no good and you still keep them 
in your employ, why it's 

Hard on the manager. 

If you compel men to work (or girls, either) side 
by side who do not pull together, why it's 

Hard on the manager. 

If there is one too many it's as bad, if not worse, 
than one short. Keep your help employed steadily, 
but don't try to get two days in one. If you do, jiist 
as sure as I write this, it will be 

Hard on the manager. 

Don't try to get one employee to do your "dirty 
work." Don't listen to the "mud-carrier." If you do, 
just as sure as you are a living man, it will be 

Hard on the manager. 

Say nothing if you can't say something good. If 



184 Second Suds Sayings 

— — » 

your man knows more than yourself keep out of his 
way or it may be 

Hard on the manager. 

A launderer (well, I mean the manager, for there is 
a distinctive difference) once told a new man, after hir- 
ing, that the last washman was no good and that he 
knew nothing, and he only found this out after the 
man was four years in his service! 

Hard on the manager. 

"You don't mean to tell me that he kept a whole 
day's pay because you were away half a day?" "Yes," 
replied the checker and assorter, " but I'll get even." 

Hard on the manager. 

"You don't know the latest," said a man to the own- 
er of a large laundry in a Canadian city for whom he 
worked as a washman. "Well, what is it now ?" asked 
the owner. "Well, sir, I've a bill dated Marth 17th, 
1910, 'For using marking tape, 25 cents.' I'm going 
to keep it as a souvenir. Now, what do you think 
about it?" The owner waited for a moment before 
making reply. "Was it written in green ink," he in- 
quired of the man. "No, sir," came the witty answer; 
"the only thing green about the business was the 
manager." 

Hard on the manager. 

When the fireman complained that the steam pres- 
sure was really too low ( a condition brought about by 
a system that had no hot water supply) Mr. Manager 
thought he would remedy it by walking through the 
washroom and closing the valves. "Who's running 
this department?" said the washman. 

Hard on the manager. 



Second Suds Sayings 185 

"What right had you to put that silk blouse in with 
the colored goods? Don't you know it should be a 
cream and not blued? You've been long enough in 
the business now to know silk goods require no blue." 
"That's all right," said the man, in reply; "all you've 
got to do is to send it back. No office boy can learn 
me my business." 

Hard on the manager. 

"I pay you for six days a week, don't I." "Yes, sir, 
for six days a week as a launderer, but not to pull 
down old buildings. If you want a laborer hire one ; 
there's many a good man in need of a job." 

Hard on the manager. 

There is only room for one "boss" in any well regu- 
lated laundry. There is plenty of room, however, 
for foremen or foreladies in each department. If they 
are men and women and the manager is a gentleman 
it will be found to be, after all, not so 

Hard on the manager. 

Remember the words of Lincoln: "You can fool 
some of the people all the time, and you can fool all 
the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the 
people all the time." I hope you don't think I'm fool- 
ish, just now, or it will be 

Hard on the manager. 



DID YOU EVER HIRE HIM? 



A Contribution. 



He is a wild eyed, seedy, dirty and unkempt speci- 
men of what the Creator designed to be one of His 
noblest works — but someone apparently stole the pat- 
tern before it was completed. He dislikes to be called 
a tramp, still he is nothing more than one of the most 
veritable "hoboes" that "ever came down .the pike." 
Liquor is often ascribed as his worst enemy, but he has 
other enemies equally as bad. First, he is lazy ; second, 
he is uneasy unless on a tramp; third, he prefers the 
comforts (?) of a chance meal to the best that could be 
afforded him; fourth, he is egotistical, and fifth, he is 
of no account anywhere. 

Who is referred to, the reader may ask. Can't you 
recognize the description ? It's a plain one, and should 
at once identify the vagrant "hobo." He has undoubt- 
edly called at your place of business some time, and 
perhaps many times. He comes in with a woe-begone 
expression, and asks for work. What can he do ? Well, 
everything; anything. Knows the business from "A 
to Z" and has held some responsible positions in the 
"largest" plants. A good washer? You bet. Knows 
that department better perhaps than any other. Who 
did he work for last? Why, the "Creme-de-la-Creme 
Steam Laundry", in Philadelphia. (That's usually 
several days' journey from where he now is.) What's 



Second Suds Sayings 187 

he doing so far from home? Oh, he had trouble with 
a foreman over one of the "lady" ironers, whom he 
doesn't deny was the "dearest woman" he ever met, 
and when he lost her — he took to the road just 
as soon as he had spent all his money in trying to 
drown his sorrow. Just tramped along the country, 
doing a day's work in a laundry when he could get it, 
but now he had decided that it was foolish to give way 
to grief, and he wanted to settle down. Well, you need 
a fellow in your washroom, and so decide to give him 
a trial. First he asks for a quarter to buy something 
to eat. You give it to him. He uses twenty cents for 
beer and five cents for a sandwich, then goes back to 
your laundry and begins operations. Of course you 
haven't all the confidence in the world with the fellow, 
so watch him. Apparently he knows his business and 
gets his first batch out all right. You look the goods 
over and are satisfied, then leave him. Things move 
along very well during the day. At night he needs 
enough pay for food and lodging. You think he will 
prove a gem, and give him a dollar. Next morning you 
still feel a little doubtful and get down to the laundry 
before anyone else. The whistle announces the hour 
to begin work, but no washman in sight. You go out 
and look up and down the street, but he can't be seen 
"hustling along." Then you take off your coat, get 
your helper in the washroom well worked up,, and 
start another day's business. 

Now do you recognize the tramp laundryman? 
Sometimes one of these fellows will remain a whole 
week in one place, but not if you give them money 
to pay daily expenses. You have got to provide for 
them otherwise. They usually get pretty well loaded 



188 Second Suds Sayings 

over night, hunt up a bunk somewhere, go to sleep and 
do not awaken until too late to go to work. Then 
they begin another tramp. And so it goes — at least 
these tramp laundrymen come and go. Many in the 
country? Well, laundrymen in small cities and towns 
can answer that better than anyone else. We hear 
about them often. Sometimes they commit a crime^ 
steal something and get caught. Then if the articles 
lost are valuable, prosecution follows, and — the "pen." 

The "Far West" is perhaps afflicted more with these 
pests during the summer months than any other sec- 
tion. In the winter they join the army of tramps that 
infest the large cities and work, beg or steal, which- 
ever is most convenient. 

They compare with the "bo" of all other trades and 
professions — no better — no worse. They live — exist — 
die. Their names are not enrolled in our obituary col- 
umn. Sometimes one of these fellows shows a con- 
siderable knowledge of the laundry business, and we 
have often heard laundrymen say they got some good 
pointers from a "tramp". But this is generally offset 
by something else, and you try to forget such a speci- 
en of God's handiwork ever entered your premises, A 
man who says he is master of all departments of 
this business is usually a failure in any one special 
thing that is to be done. Better be a master of one 
special department and do your work well than to 
attempt to botch some other department. 

Laundryowners, pay good wages; employ reliable 
men or women ; teach them their duties ; give them to 
understand that you do not feel so far their superior 
as not to keep in respectable touch with them, and 
you will not need to hire tramps. 



HER CONSCIENCE TROUBLED HER. 



A Contribution. 



Now comes the Summer girl, 
Demurely sweet and dressed so neat 
In cool white lingerie. 

She was certainly good to look upon, this pretty 
summer girl. From the top of her blue-ribboned straw 
hat to her dainty shoes of gray canvas, she was com- 
plete ; a perfect type of the modern summer girl. She 
walked with a firm, graceful step, fully conscious of 
the admiration that was directed to her, and the sweet, 
gentle expression of her face seemed never to have 
known the storm of anger. 

The laundry office was her objective point, and as 
she stepped up to the counter and threw down a mussy 
bundle, her entire demeanor underwent a complete 
change. Her features became set and a stormy frown 
wrinkled her brow. The laundryowner looked into her 
stony features with a timid inquiring gaze, and won- 
dered what was coming, but she pointed to the pack- 
age before her in disdainful silence. He opened the 
bundle, expecting to find the evidences of some fear- 
ful crime that was to be laid at his door, but instead 
there was disclosed nothing but a shirt waist, rather 
faded for a fact, yet it was only a faded shirt waist, 
and he breathed easier. 



190 Second Suds Sayings 

"It is faded," said he; "I am very sorry. How 
much did you pay for it?" 

"A dollar and a half," was the cold reply. 

"Very well, miss, here is your money," and the 
obliging laundryowner counted out the change. "Is it 
all right now?" said he. 

"I paid you fifteen cents for laundering that 
waist." The tones of her voice were very sharp and 
decided. 

The laundryowner sighed audibly, but promptly add- 
ed this amount to the money already in her hand, 
and with a forced smile again asked if everything was 
now satisfactory. 

"O, yes, perfectly satisfactory," said she, and start- 
ed to leave. At the door she looked back, and seeing 
him rolling up the shirt waist asked what he was going 
to do with it. 

"Throw it away," said he in a careless manner, but 
noticing the peculiar expression on her face, and guess- 
ing its meaning, asked, "Would you like to have it?" 

She hardly had time to answer in the affirmative 
when he called to the office girl, "Jennie, make a nice 
bundle of this waist and put a strong string around it, 
so the lady can safely carry it." When this was done 
he politely handed it to the now smiling customer with 
this remark, that if there was anything else he could - 
do he would be most delighted, and then went out 
in the washroom and kicked himself. 

Early the next morning the office girl came and told 
him that the same young lady wanted to see him. 
What now, he thought, and made a very uncompli- 



Second Suds Sayings 191 

mentary wish, but was agreeably surprised when he 
stepped in the office and received a very smiHng visitor. 
"Here is the dollar and sixty-five cents," said she 
in a rather shaky voice; "I've brought it back to you, 
for I couldn't keep it. I couldn't sleep all night long, 
for it seems just like stealing to take this money. The 
waist was sure to fade soon anyway, besides, it don't 
look so badly after all. You were so gentlemanly and 
kind about it that I am heartily ashamed of the way I 
acted. Please accept my apology," and she went out, 
leaving an astonished laundryowner gazing at a few 
pieces of silver that lay on the counter. 




I'tcibi^^'tWSai***' 






How many shirts do I possess? 

That question I won't tell. 
But from my- looks at present, "Pard," 

You wouldn't call me swell. 
It's not the shirt that makes the man, 

Nor is it pants and vest ; 
But if the goods are on the line, 

You bet ! I'll do the rest. 

The other day a lady asked 

Who was it made my clothes. 
I knew that she was guyin' me 

By wrinkles 'bout her nose. 
She piped me who my launderer was 

That washed my linen fine, 
And how I got my negligee 

To fit my form divine. 

This riddle she then fired at me : 

Just tell me, if you can, 
"How many shirts are in ten yards 

To fit a full grown man?" 
I looked at her with cute surprise. 

Then straightened up my spine, 
"Why, lady, dear, that all depends 

How many's on the line." 

—Tom J. Nicholl. 



THE LOST SHIRT. 



(With apologies to Ben. Kii^g.) 



If I should die to-night, 

And you should come to my cold corpse and say, 

Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay; 

If I should die to-night, 

And you should come to me in deepest grief and woe 

And say, "The shirt you lost was old when I did bring 

it in," 
I might arise in my white cravat 
And say, "What's that?" 

If I should die to-night, 

And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, 

Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel; 

I say, if I should die to-night. 

And should come to me there and then 

Just even hint that the lost shirt was old when you did 

send it in, 
I might rise the while — 
But I'd drop dead again. 



WASH DAY DOWN IN GEORGIA. 

« 

By Tom J. Nicholl. 



Sunny days in Georgia, weather mighty fine; 
Mocking birds a singin' — blossoms on de vine; 
Razor-backs a rootin' — pickaninnies play; 
Aint no time for trouble — darkies all are gay. 

When de clothes needs washin' Mammy gits de tub, 
Puts de garmints soakin' fo' she gins to rub; 
Couldn't evah git her use a wash-machine, 
Says dey's works of Satan, worses' evah seen. 

While she rubs she sings, suh, 'bout de Gospel ship, 
'Lows its suah a-comin' on its heavenly trip. 
You all suah would listen to her sing dis song, 
Git out Mister Satan, yo's bin heah too long. 

Calls de chil'in to her, tells dem poke de fire. 
Keeps de kittle bilin'; she dun nevah tire; 
Arms deep in soap-suds — clothes look mighty clean. 
Wash-day down in Georgia — Mammy's de machine. 



THE LAUNDRYOWNER'S CHRISTMAS 
GREETING. 



By Ernest McGaffey. 



A greeting to the ones that youth 
Half holds, half loosens, as they stand 
Like those who bid farewell to truth 
Looking far back on childhood land. 

And blessings to the boys and girls. 
The stockings hung on mantel rim, 
And starry eyes and clustering curls 
That light the Christmas wakening dim. 

May each hearth glow with mellow light 
Despite the storm-wind's minor keys, 
And waxen candles glimmer bright 
In the green-branching Christmas trees. 

Fair greeting then with cheerful voice. 
Long life and mirth and music's cheer. 
And may my work your hearts rejoice 
All through the onward coming year. 

May childish laughter fill each room 
Through all the happy holidays, 
While winter sunlight chases gloom 
Back to the sunless yesterdays. 

And when the stars in beauty look 
From cold untrodden fields on high. 
And sparkle on the frozen brook 
Which, mufHed voice, goes wandering by, 



196 Second Suds Sayings 

And when my wagon standing waits 
Beside the homes that know me best, 
Greeting to those who ope the gates, 
On north or south or east or west, 

Then music, light, a touch of song 
A hand-clasp firm, a welcome true, 
And memory's spell to bind along 
The old year's graces with the new. 

The back-log's blaze and bounteous board 
With treasures gathered at their prime. 
Red apples, round and honey-cored 
And nuts from autumn's harvest time. 

The dance, when with his violin 
The fiddler makes the rafters ring. 
And bubbling through the noisy din 
The kettle's ^sputtering echoes sing. 

The sleigh rides, with their merr^^ peals 
That jangle forth from trembling bells, 
While from the hurrying horses' heels 
Are spurned the roadside dips and swells. 

A greeting to the ones who find 
Tlieir chiefest joy in linen fair. 
Smooth as a grape's rich bloom outlined 
And laundered with the best of care. 

And when the new year's blessings break 
Swift upon Christmas — even then. 
Fair greeting for His loved sake 
Peace upon earth, good will to men. 



MEMORIES OF CLINTON STREET. 



[The following poem, by Tom J. NichoU, a local poet and artist, 
was sent by Charles Dowst, the Editor, to several of his old time 
friends.] 

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" 

Oh no, with me not yet. 
The friends I made long years ago 

Are friends I'll ne'er forget. 
So here's to all those far away, 

As well as all those near, 
A Merry Christmas one and all. 

Also a Glad New Year. 
[The following is a characteristic reply from Walter Lutes.] 
Memories of Clinton, or "robbers row," 
Why yes! 'Twas twenty years ago 
That Fate reached out with "Hello, Bo!" 
And pulled me in! 

And Fate was good, as she most always is. 
For I joined the "bunch," got in the biz, 
And with spirits down, or when they riz, 
I knew them! 

Remember you, "The famous stand," 
Where we bent the arm and raised the hand, 
With the "old time boys" — salt of the land — 
And loved them! 

To name them now would be to call the roll. 
Some have paid life's final toll; 
Not one "but had a Christian soul," 
And we knew it! 

And now we commune, both you and I; 
I have your card, this is my reply: 
Let's say cross our hearts — and hope to die 
If we forget them. 



BE SQUARE. 

By Wm. E. Fitch. 



If you would enjoy your lot — 

Be square. 
If your neighbor loves you not — 

Be square. 
When commissions soaring go 
And the agent gets the "dough," 
Sure it's hard, but say it slow — 

B-e S-q-u-a-r-e. 

Others may not think it's right 

To be square. 
But I tell you it is might 

To be square. 
Stealing agents, bidding high. 
Only sweetens up their pie, 
Pays much better, you and I — 

To be square; 

When the rest are in a "scrap," 

Just be square. 
You will surely get the "pap" 

If you're square; 
Keep right on sawing wood. 
Run your business — run it good — 
You will win, just as you should — 

If you're square. 



THAT GOOD OLD TRADE PAPER. 



By a Laundry owner. 

(With Apologies to Denver Post.) 



When the evenin' shade is fallin' at the endin' o' the day, 
An' a fellow takes enjoyment in his own peculiar way, 
T'here's nothin' does him so much good, be fortun' up or 

down. 
As his favorit' trade paper from 

or 

Chicago 
Town. 

It is a thing of beauty, an' its print is always clean, 

An' it straightens out his temper when a feller's feelin' 

mean. 
It takes the wrinkles out his face an' brushes off a frown. 
That favorite trade paper from 

or 

Chicago 
Town. 

It tells of all the laundries and the news from Robbers 
Row, 

'Bout those who spent a week there, and how their busi- 
ness grows, 

An' it keeps a feller posted 'bout who's up an' who is down. 

That favorite laundry paper from 

or 

Chicago 
Town. 

I like to read the dailies an' a story paper too. 
An' at times a yaller novel, and other trash — don't you? 
But when I wants some readin' that'll brush away a frown 
I'll read my favorite laundry paper from 

or 

Chicago 
Town. 



THE SPECIALS THAT NEVER COME OUT. 



By John J. Hurley. 



There are trials and troubles and worries 

From Monday till Saturday night, 
About this thing and that in a laundry, 

But the greatest of all is our plight 
When a customer asks for his "special," 

And we call up the sorter: She'll shout, 
"Don't see it here;" we — well, bless them — 

The "specials" that never come out. 

Then off to the marker we hurry, 

"How 'bout that there 'special' of Jones'?" 
She'll look at us, pained and quite weary, 

And drawl out, with one of her moans, 
"Marked in, and marked 'special' when brought here,' 

Then down through the washroom we scout, 
To find if our Johnny knows aught of 

Tlie "special" that never came out. 

But Johnny, of course, cannot help it; 

He washes them fast as they come. 
So we grapple with May, the head starcher, 

Who jerks up a little wet thumb, 
And says we must ask them about it 

Upstairs, as she hasn't a doubt 
She starched all the "specials" last evening, 

And 'tis funny they never came out. 



Second Suds Sayings 201 

Then, with new hope rising within us, 

We hie to the ladies upstairs. 
We talk, and they listen in wonder, 

Then look at each other — in pairs, 
"I'm sure they were ironed and finished," 

"I'm sure they are not hereabout." 
"I'm sure that the sorter must have them. 

And that she has not sent them out." 

That settles our search, and we know just 

As much now as when we commenced. 
They've all got away from our questions, 

And our patron is waiting, incensed. 
Oh, woe to the maids of a laundry; 

May they be attacked with the gout, 
Whene'er they delay, by being lazy, 

The "specials" that never come out. 



NOT THIS TIME. 



(After Ben Bolt.) 



Do you remember that shirt we lost, Ben Bolt, 

That shirt so tattered and torn; 
The man who brought it in, Ben Bolt, 

Now swears it had never been worn. 



But I've found that shirt that was lost, Ben Bolt, 
And I'll swear he has worn it for years; 

And the tale that he'll tell to me, Ben Bolt, 
Would make e'en a banker shed tears. 



But won't I give him the laugh, Ben Bolt, 

After his tale he's told. 
When I hand him over that shirt, Ben Bolt, 

With a stare that is icy cold. 

But he's only one of a hundred, Ben Bolt, 

That comes to my place each day 
With a claim for goods that are lost, Ben Bolt, 

That in justice I cannot pay. 

They make my life a hell, Ben Bolt, 

With their unjust claims by the score; 
But I hope St. Peter will give them their dues, Ben Bolt, 

When they reach the golden shore. 



WHEN THEY SHAKE THE BLANKETS OUT. 



By John J. Hurley. 



There's enjoyment in a laundry; 

Yes, you bet there's lots of fun, 
Especially on Friday, 
' When the work's all nearly done; 
For 'tis then we get to laughing 

As we gather round about 
Our Johnny and our Maggie 

When they shake the blankets out. 

Sometimes they have a dozen, 

Sometimes as many more. 
And we watch to see if Maggie 

Or if Johnny wins the score. 
That 'tis tiresome on the arms 

There is not the slightest doubt, 
And we wouldn't want their places 

When they shake the blankets out. 

Tliey both look awful serious 

When they pick the corners up. 
With their eyes as large as saucers 

And each cheek just like a cup; 
Then off they go, a-blowin', 

And we raise a cheering shout; 
Some bet on Mag, some Johnny, 

When they shake the blankets out. 



204 Second Suds Sayings 

And as we get to laughing 

They can't help but join in, too, 
For Johnny's eyes are full of fuzz, 

And Maggie's looking blue. 
But Maggie keeps her end up, 

Though she isn't half as stout 
As Johnny, and we praise her, 

When they shake the blankets out. 

But as they near the finish, 

Nearly always Johnny's mad. 
For the fuzz sticks on his mustache; 

'Cause it does, our Maggie's glad; 
And you'd think she'd crack her face a 

Smilin' when she sees him pout, 
And she always wins on Friday, 

When they shake the blankets out. 



AM I RIGHT? 



By Tom J. NichoU. 



It's easy to laugh when all is serene, 

And everything's coming your way, 
No end of good fellows will come at your beck 

As long as you're willing to pay. 
But — mark the change, should the tide take a turn 

And you have lost out in the race, 
Not one of the bunch will lend you a hand 

To smile in adversity's face. 

It's easy to dance when the fiddler's paid 

And money galore in the till; 
It matters but naught when you have the price, 

Your friends will all stick to you still. 
But here's to the man that's sterling clean thru 

When you're in misfortune's embrace; 
He's ready and willing to help you 

To smile in adversity's face. 

It's easy to shout when the victory's won, 

But what of the fellow that's down? 
If he's done his best, just help him arise, 

Don't give him a kick or a frown. 
Speak kindly to him, be generous, too; 

To be down isn't any disgrace. 
Kind words and a mite will help him, all right. 

To smile in adversity's face. 



THE OLD FASHIONED WASHBOARD. 



By John J. Hurley. 



How dear to my heart is the old-fashioned washboard 
That mother used washing when I was a boy, 
With its zinc-covered ridges the suds used to play in, 
And soap bubbles gamboled to my childish joy. 
Ofttimes have I watched her when wearing her knuckles, 
As over the ridges our duds she would rub, 
I ne'er will forget how she splashed and she slathered 
The old-fashioned washboard that stood in the tub. 
(Chorus) 

The old-fashioned washboard; 

The zinc-covered washboard; 
The back-breaking washboard that stood in the tub. 

I'll always remember when school it was over, 
And home I returned I never could pass 
Unless I jumped over the white sheets and napkins 
That mother had spread out to bleach on the grass. 
And poor mother lay on the old-fashioned sofa. 
All played out, and I'd have to eat just cold grub. 
She never had hot lunch for me when she tackled 
The old-fashioned washboard that stood in the tub. 

(Chorus) 
Some folks always kick about up-to-date laundries, 
And say that they wear out their clothes every day; 
But give them to me, so I'll have a hot dinner 
At home, and the smell of the soap-suds away. 
I know that the washing machine is much easier 
On all of our clothes than to take them and rub 
Till the buttons and bosoms are lost and worn out 
By the old-fashioned washboard that stood in the tub. 

(Chorus) 



GOOD-BYE, TROUBLES. 



By Tom J. Nicholl. 



When there's heaps o' trouble brewin', 

That's the time to show your grit; 
Don't you fume and sweat and worry, 

Jes' git up and tackle it. 
And suppose you have a tussle 

That will send you to the mat, 
Don't git cold feet, try it over, 

If you're downed once, what o' that: 

It's the feller that is merry, 

Goin' down the sunny side, 
With his countenance extended 

By a smile that he can't hide. 
Never leaves the trail fer trouble, 

Always meets it face to face, 
Knows' twill break jes' like a bubble, 

Ef he sets a lively pace. 

Yes, you'll .find old Mister Trouble, 

Ef you're huntin' after him, 
With a chip upon his shoulder, 

And a lookin' mighty grim. 
Jes' shout out, thar's nothin' doin', 

Ef you want ter see him hike — 
And he's sure to hunt tall timber, 

As he wanders down the pike. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

A Christmas Invasion. By Charles Lederer 176 

Ahead of the World. By Wolf von Shierbrand 148 

Am I Right? By Tom J. Nicholl 205 

And the Woman? By Kirke La Shelle 86 

Around the World. By George Horton 46 

A Rusher. By Opie Read 136 

A Story From Cuba. By A. K. Potter 181 

A Thrifty Woman. By Colonel Will Visscher 62 

Be Square. By Wm. E. Fitch 198 

Did You Ever Hire Him? - 186 

Down in Old Mexico. By A. K. Potter 101 

Efficiency — Your Own. By Frank W. Porter Ill 

Evolution. By Wm. E. Fitch 66 

Getting Laundry in War. By Richard Henry Little. . 11 

Good Advice. By Charles Dowst 153 

Good-Bye, Troubles. By Tom J. Nicholl 207 

Hard on the Manager. By H. H. Spencer 183 

Her Conscience Troubled Her 189 

If. By Wm. E. Fitch 143 

Laugh It Off. By Wm. E. Fitch 14 

Laundering in Asia. By Frank G. Carpenter 31 

Letter to Charles Dowst. By Bill Nye 58 

Mame's "Count" Explains. By Isabella Oakes Shaw. . 117 

Memories of Clinton Street , 197 

Memories of Long Ago. By Charles Dowst 18 

Not This Time 202 

Opie Read's Dilemma. By Opie Read 11 

"Show People's" Laundry. By J. A. Eraser 161 

That Good Old Trade Paper. By a Laundryowner 199 

The Extra Ounce Required. By E. Ray Speare 174 

The Foreman's Story. By Frank H. Spearman 5 

The Laundryowner 's Christmas Greeting. By Ernest 

McGaffey 195 

The Lost Shirt 193 

The Marker's Story. By Charles Dowst 108 

The Old Fashioned Washboard. By John J. Hurley. . 206 

The Old Way. By Eugene Wood 52 

The Route Man's Story. By Frank H. Spearman 167 

The Specials That Never Come Out. By John J. Hurley 200 

The Tale of His Shirts. By George Fitch 40 

The Washman's Story. By Frank H. Spearman 77 

Wash Day Down in Georgia. By Tom J. Nicholl 194 

When They Shake the Blankets Out. By John J. Hurley 203 



237 90 










* » I 1 ^ 













. . -^^ • * ^y ... <*^ " • * ^^ ^3. V 















